LibGuides & CampusGuides Updates Now Live!
We had a code rollout last night – read on to discover the new features we’ve added!
- E-Reserves Updates- we’ve introduced a ton of new features for the E-reserves module!
- We’ve added a new E-Reserve Request Form option! This makes it easy to collect reserve item requests from instructors. For more information, check the FAQ, Jack.
- We’ve added a new IP restriction option, so you can restrict the E-Reserves area by IP
- You can now reorder E-reserve items in courses
- You can now create E-Reserve items directly from the E-Reserve page in a guide
- You can now create E-Reserve folders directly, independent of items
- We added a “Course” filter on the E-Reserve Items control alrea, making it easier to manage items
- We’ve added Hex Color Pickers across the site, making it easier to select color options
- We’ve overhauled the Guide Layout/Colors screen, making it easier to create your guide look and feel
- CampusGuides Clients have a new Access Restriction option: Limit access to your system to logged-in users only. In other words, only people who have an account in your CampusGuides system can view published content in your site. To enable this option, shoot us a message – support@springshare.com.
- Credo Search Content Box - Add a search of your Credo Reference content, and display results right in your guides! To see it in action & learn how it works, check out our help guide.
- We also added lots of little niceties and fixes, including:
- You can now submit the “Add Box” page by hitting enter, instead of needing to manually click “Submit”
- We’ve added character limit warnings to several areas, including custom profile fields, adding tags, etc.
- Discussion board posts should now reflect your local time
As always, thanks to everyone who suggested new features. Keep em coming, we love to hear from you!
Springshare gets nostalgic – it’s our 5-year anniversary!
Five years ago, George Bush was president, the Writers Guild of America went on strike, Steve Jobs announced the first generation iPhone, and a library-loving company called Springshare came into being. What a long way we’ve all come since then! As you can tell, we’re feeling a little nostalgic on this, the 5-year anniversary of the first LibGuide. Sadly, that guide has since been retired, but like all nostalgic people, we enjoy looking at snapshots through the years – and we thought you might too!
Here’s the first iteration of the LibGuides home page – thanks to Michael Stephens for sharing this image!
The admin page, circa 2008 – thanks to Kelly Smith at Eastern Kentucky University for this one!
And we saved the best for last – an old 404 message, shared by Elizabeth Brixton. Just so you know, it’s really Slaven’s fault.
We’ve come a long way in 5 years – from one guide to almost 250,000 (whoa!), and from a handful of librarians to over 44,000 (double-whoa!). Many thanks to all of you for being part of the Springy community – you guys never cease to amaze, educate, and delight us. And wow, time really does fly when you’re having fun!
New in Best Of: Guides to Health and Wellness (and so much more!)
By now, most of you know about our Best Of site. It houses a collection of guides considered “Best” for one reason or another – best page layout, best collection of resources, best use of images… you get the idea. 
The best part of Best Of? We’ve already contacted the original guide authors and asked them if they’re willing to share their awesome content, so you’re free to copy any featured guide into your own site and reuse / remix it to your hearts content!
This week, we’ve added a new group of awesome guides to Health & Wellness Resources. These guides were compiled by the experts at Eugene Public Library and Berkeley Public Library, & showcase resources that cover everything from Fitness & Exercise to Nutrition, and from Alternative & Complimentary Medicine to Men’s & Women’s Health. Check them out – they’re sure to put a spring in your step!
We’re always looking for new guides to feature in Best Of. If you’ve created or know of a guide that makes you go “Whoa, that’s awesome!”, let us know!
Web Developer Ninjas: Come Work with Springshare!
Hey there, Springy Nation! We’re hunting for a few great Web Developers to help us carry out our mission of creating awesome web software and providing even awesome-r service to our libraries. If you have mad skills and a thirst for innovation (or you know someone who does), we want to talk to you!
This is what we’re looking for:
- LAMP skills of the ninja caliber, including 3+ years PHP / MySQL experience and Unix / Apache skills
- Experience in scaling web infrastructure
- Front-end JS programming experience (e.g. jQuery or dojo)
- Bonus Round: worked with Nginx, Mobile tech, or Solr? Experience with any of these is a plus. Worked with all three? Where have you been all our lives??
- You need to be a self-starter and self-motivating type. We work in a typical startup fashion so you’ll be wearing many hats and doing a lot of things – at once – hence having great organizational and multitasking skills is essential.
In a typical week, you’ll:
- Create front- and back-end interfaces for new or existing products, letting your creative juices run free
- Work with our partners (other library-centric companies) to integrate their tools with Springy and vice versa
- Dream up new ideas that will rock the library (software) world
- Every one us (including our mad genius CEO) also helps with support and making sure our customers’ needs are taken care of, so you’ll be talking with our customers regularly, troubleshooting bug fixes and such
We offer:
- Great pay and benefits (health, dental, 401K, etc.)
- Very flexible vacations/time off policy
- Working from home (yes, you heard it right, though slackers need not apply – see the point above about needing to be a self-starter and self-motivator)
- A very supportive, library-centric environment (half of our team is librarians).
If this sounds like your dream gig, please send your resume to sarah@springshare.com and let us know what makes you awesome.
LibAnswers – New Features are Live!
Can you feel it? Spring is here, and we’re celebrating with a new crop of LibAnswers features!
New in LibAnswers:
- SMS now available in Canada and the UK! Picture it: a text messaging service that’s directly tied in to your LibAnswers workflow. Send and receive SMS messages, create auto-responders, and enjoy a wealth of statistics – all from one centralized interface. We’re thrilled to extend this service to our clients in Canada and the UK – to get started, email sales@springshare.com!
- Keyword Improvements – Adding keywords helps your users discover relevant public questions in your system. This feature now supports key-phrases – aka keywords that have spaces. We’ve also added an auto-suggest feature, to help you discover keywords and phrases you’ve used previously. Yay for easy!
- Customizable Search Results Page – Add custom content to the public search results screen! Admins: head to Admin Stuff > Ask Us Form > Search Form.
New in Reference Analytics:
- READ Scale Integration – Many of you asked for an easy way to integrate the Reference Effort Assessment Data (READ) Scale when recording Reference Analytics transactions – so we added an easy solution! Admins will see a new option when editing an instance – “Use the READ Scale?”. This integrates the qualitative six-point scale and guidelines for use directly in your record a transaction screen.
- Design changes for the Record a Transaction screen – We’re always working to make sure our tools have the best design possible, so the Record Transaction screen got a facelift! We’ve nipped, tucked, and cleaned things up, shedding unnecessary popups and onscreen text to deliver a cleaner, user friendlier look.
- Customizable widths on the Record a Transaction screen – want to customize the widths of the selection boxes on the Record a Transaction screen? Now you can! Check out this faq for instructions.
SpringyCamp: Call for Presenters!
Are you an agent of change? A harbinger of innovation? A cutting-edge rawking pioneer? The most integrating’est integrator the biblioworld has ever seen!?
If you answered yes to any of the above – then SpringyCamp wants you!
SpringyCamp, April 13th 2012 focuses on Integration. We need presenters who have:
- Integrated Springshare products in cool & innovative ways!
- LibCal My Scheduler in LibAnswers?
- LibAnalytics Widgets in LibGuides?
- LibAnswers widgets in LibGuides?
- … other integrations we haven’t thought of but YOU have!
- Integrated your Springshare content in outside systems (Facebook, CMS, LMS & More!).
- Integrated:
- Realities? Blended physical & mobile worlds via QR Codes, SMS Keywords, Mobile Site Builder?
- Across departments? Within or, outside, your Library.
- … and more!
So what are you waiting for? Submit your proposal NOW!
LibGuides & CampusGuides Updates Now Live!
Here at Springshare, we really do love librarians – so we whipped up a little Valentine’s gift for all our libraries. Check out these new-and-awesome features, and let us know – will you be our Valentine?
- Enhanced Content in Books from the Catalog box*
Wouldn’t it be nice if you could enter an ISBN and automatically retrieve information for any book? Now you can! Just enter an ISBN, and we’ll automatically pull in the item’s title, author, and cover art.
CampusGuides Mega Bonus: Our CampusGuides clients can also pull book descriptions, bestseller lists, Subject Categories, Publisher information, and other enhanced content from Bowker – for free, to be used in your guides! - Translate Public Screens
LibGuides en Espanol? Francais? Italiano? Libraries can now customize the hard-coded text on public screens in their local language. If your local language is English, you can also customize the text to meet your needs. For example, change the search box drop-down to read “This Site” instead of “All Guides”. To customize your language file, email support@springshare.com to get started! - New “Edit Box” menu
You’ll love the consolidated menu in the “edit box” area. We combined all box edit functions into one screen. Just click “edit box”, and you’ll be able to change the box title, type, colors, etc. Even better, you can grab each box’s direct link, as well as an API call for any box, all in the same screen! - Add Longer Descriptions to the Links & Lists box
We get it. 500 characters for description in the Links & Lists box wasn’t enough, so we’ve upped the length of the description field to 1,000 characters. - Using the Serials Solutions A-Z Import Tool?
Now you can update the 3-letter Serials Solutions ID for any previously imported link! Just head to your A-Z import guide and select “edit link”. You’ll see a new tab for “Serials Solutions” – click it to change the Serials Solutions Database Identifier. - CampusGuides clients can now upload files up to 10MB in size
CampusGuides folks – we’ve doubled your file upload size from 5MB to 10MB. - Update to AddThis Button
The email function in the AddThis button on public screens is back up and working properly! - Guide Status Notification on all screens
Seriously – sometimes it’s all about the little things. We’ve added a note to the edit guide screen that lets you know the guide’s current status – Unpublished, Published, or Private.
* Please remember – free use of Syndetics cover art and Bowker content is limited to use within LibGuides and CampusGuides
