I came across a couple of resources tonight that have captured my attention and I’m sure will be very useful to some of my colleagues and others in my network.

The use of social media applications as research tools has become quite popular in recent times, with lots of experimenting and trialling of ideas taking place. Social media: a guide for researchers has been produced by the International Centre for Guidance Studies, and aims to provide the information needed to make an informed decision about using social media and select from the vast range of tools that are available.

The 48 page downloadable PDF guide is well worth a browse – it contains some informative case studies as well as links to useful tools and applications in the social media space. It also has an excellent section on managing information overload – with  a useful introduction to filtering information and to network theory.

The second resource was posted as a response to the first, and is titled Impact 2.0 iGuide – New mechanisms for linking research and policy. This guide exists in a wiki format, with the original text developed by Cheekay Cinco and Karel Novotný, Association for Progressive Communications APC and later versions of the document co-authored by Bruce Girard, Fundación Comunica.

This guide is intended to be used as a manual, which aims to provide you with concrete tools for your communication needs in specific situations. it covers  a range of topics from an introduction to What Are Web 2.0 Tools and Why They Should be Incorporated into the Research through to how to build new policy networks based the evidence this research provides.

Great to see this sort of guidance being documented – I’m sure it will be useful to a whole new breed of researchers out there (and some of us older ones too!)