Mind Maps: Home

Welcome to mind mapping! Mind maps (and other visual information organization techniques) are a way to represent information graphically and can help you organize or brainstorm concepts, identify hierachies, schedule events, or find your way to higher-level thinking. The video below will help you get started, but it is as easy as this:

• write your central concept in the middle of a blank page,
• label the subconcepts on branches coming out from the central concept,
• add sub-subconcepts on smaller branches (you have now illustrated hierarchies),
• use colors,
• draw simple pictures,
• connect any concepts with a dotted line to show relationships.

Your brain will respond to your mind map because our human brains recognize pictures before we learn to understand language.I use mind maps to summarize books for my book discussion, to organize information for essays and articles, to brainstorm ideas, and even to speak from when I do presentations. You might not understand my mind maps, but you will definitely find your own useful.

This LibGuide will help you understand how to make mind maps and use other kinds of visual representations to organize information. Watch my video, and then take a look at Tony Buzan's video below it. Buzan is an expert on the brain and memory, and created this whole mind map concept. In his video, Buzan mentions the software his company created. It is slick but pricey, but you will be happy to know that there is free mind map software to be found (click on the 'software' link in my Delicious tag cloud on the lower right) and there is a free version of Buzan's iMindMap tool available as an iPhone app.

There are many more mind map resources linked on my Delicious.com page, including my mind map blog (http://margaretmindmapping.blogspot.com). Books in the BCCC library that use mind maps are referenced in the box in the left column. Lastly, I wrote an article which describes mind maps and other kinds of visual organizations of information with lots of samples and links to resources. This is linked in the left column in the box labeled, "The Long Article" (although it is not that long). It is probably best to read this article online so that you can click on the links to see the examples.

I hope you find creating mind maps as fun and useful as I do. Use the contact info underneath my photo to let me know what you think!

This video will show you how to create a mind map to organize a concept and its details. I'm using the principles of mind map inventor and brain expert Tony Buzan: his book is listed on the left of this page and his video is below.

I created this mind map with Spiderscribe.com to promote a mind map presentation. It took a few takes to get it right, but the tool is so easy to use I made this mind map with bells and whistles in less than four minutes! (And it is free.)

Here's a video by mind map inventor Tony Buzan. He explains the principles of mind mapping, shows examples and features his own mind mapping software (which is free in the iPhone app store).

In this box, I have placed links to further information about visual representations of information using cool social media tools. They are interactive, so I encourage you to leave me comments!

Check out my mind mapping blog here: