1. LibGuides:
Sort of Homebrewed
Oklahoma Library Association
Homebrewed Workshop
February 1, 2013
Dana Belcher
Assistant Library Director
Collection Services Librarian
East Central University
dbelcher@ecok.edu
http://library.ecok.edu
2. LibGuides – Why?
• Staffing!!
– 6 librarians
– 7 staff
– No one to build from ground up
• Easy to use!
• Cheap!
– Based on FTE (< $0.30)
– Really less than that – graphic add-on
3. LibGuides – Who?
• Springshare - http://springshare.com/
– They have all the techies
– They built it – we came!
• ECU
– Librarians, for now
– Staff, training in process
– It’s as easy as using a word processor
4. Springshare Resources
• Springshare Lounge
– Blog
– Newsletter
– Springycamp
– Suggestions
– Other librarians with great ideas
– http://springsharelounge.com/
5. How to do it
• Information architecture
• Multiple access points
• Create templates
• Create reusable content
• Create rotating boxes
• Take advantage of built-ins:
– Statistics
– Maintenance
• Assign ownership
7. Instant Statistics
ID Page Name Views
ID Page Name Views 1929769 Home 1876
3418452 Main 131
1930151 P 396
3418454 Search 59
2052955 A-Z 160
3418453 Plan 57
2126048 Resources by Major 101
3418456 Using APA 19
3418455 Evaluate 6 1930140 E 74
275 1930158 W 74
ID Page Name
2119326
Views
Newspaper Resources 66
2307482 Home 584
1930136 A 65
Books, Articles,
2307483 274
& More
2119290 General Resources 61
2307484 Services for You 55
Transfer
2384908 6
Students
919
8. Maintenance
• Link-checkers: computer and human
• Linked boxes make updating easy
• Maintenance standards for course &
subject guides
– Student assistants continuously check links
9. Content Ownership
• Responsibility
– Main administrator
– Other librarians
• Information
– Pages
– Blocks
• Collaboration with library staff & faculty
• Peer & self evaluation
14. Let’s Get to it!
• http://ecok.libguides.com
– Examples
– Questions?
• http://libraryschool.campusguides.com/
– Email
– Password
Editor's Notes
This entire project, as well as the many others that we have mentioned, were all done collaboratively. Yes, collaboration makes your eyes roll and may cause you to pull out your hair, but we have found that it is the key to our success. With collaboration comes responsibility! Before, the departments were responsible for maintaining their webpages, but the rest fell mainly to me as the library’s webmaster. Now, with the different take on how we present our information, new responsibilities were developed. One person may be responsible for a LibGuide, however, others may have responsibilities for tabs or even boxes within that LibGuide. For example, the Library Employees LibGuide is mainly administrative, which falls to me. However, one of the tabs in that guide is professional presentations – all librarians are responsible for loading their presentations to this tab. Consequently, you can find this presentation loaded there. LibGuides provides the ability to assign certain guides to one or more people.Collaboration – currently, the five librarians and the director all have access to create LibGuides. All of us were involved in all decisions made towards the subject & course guides, as well as the webrefresher project. Also, we found ourselves asking each other and our liaison departments for input in creating our subject, course, and internal LibGuides.What did we learn:Buy-in – by having a say in the decision process, one is more likely to buy-in to the products and contentThat buy-in leads directly into content ownership and content connectedness (the who, what, why, when, and how)Although it may take a little bit longer, collaboration, IMHO, allows you to get more done by involving more people. There is no way a single librarian could have accomplished all that we have talked about today, as well as worked on our various other projects and kept up-to-date with their everyday responsibilities.It was amazing to see how everyone looks at the same thing in different ways. This allowed us to think outside of the box and come up with an incredible product!
Pull up LibGuides dashboard and give an overview:Options across the topBring up About the LibraryDifferent pages have different columnsSome pages aren’t part of that guide - FAQsReordering of boxesGuide settingsBring up Resuable ContentKeep like things together/organizedCheck out Services tab – multi-paged!Multiple owners for this guide!Reused boxes:Can be used as is – link provided in box title indicated where linked toCan be copied – allows editing; will not be updated since no longer linkedBring up News & How Tos& Featured ResourcesBring up Nursing guideStandard tabs & opening boxes on each pageWidgetsRotating contents boxReused content – hours, get help, etc.Latest purchaseseBooksWebpages – suggest a linkComments in every boxCreate a new guide – Search the communityCourse Content template/Subject Guide templateReuse a guideShow each type of boxOrganize the naming of guides and URLs