Springshare Support Blog » Kudos

CampusGuides Transform Librarians into Tech Innovators

rikhei — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 16:18:12 +0000

Just as the librarians at Johnson & Wales University (Providence) found Springshare tools helped them earn a “Rock Star” status on campus, we’re pleased to report that another library recently earned kudos from their university community. Nova Southeastern University Libraries won 1^st place in the professional category of the university’s 12th Annual Technology Fair for their creative adaptations of CampusGuides for educational technology. We spoke with librarians Carrie Gits and Courtney Mlinar to learn how CampusGuides helped foster community and knowledge-sharing across campus.

Q: Tell us more about the technology fair…

The Office of Information Technologies & Digital Media coordinates an annual Technology Fair to promote the use of technology in the workplace. They solicit entries from faculty & staff (professional, administrative, & technology). The fair traditionally has a theme (this year it was be green, work green, go green, live green) and aims to highlight technology projects and recognize initiatives across the NSU campus.

Q: Congratulations on winning first place! Why do you think you won the award?

We have discovered the possibilities with CampusGuides are endless! The judging panel loved the idea of personalizing library resources for students or classes and that an assessment piece could be tied into the guide. The versatility of the box types and page editing settings allow the authors to create the best educational tools for the user’s needs.

We also feel that staff recognized how easy the tool was to use and that it really did help the libraries become more efficient and effective in creating “green” online instructional and subject specific material.

Q: How did you describe CampusGuides to the judges – what were some of the things you highlighted?

We promoted CampusGuides as an opportunity for future collaboration and personalization (i.e., course reserves module, librarian directory profiles, and adding faculty and students as content creators for their own guides). We highlighted the product’s ease of use, that staff with a variety of tech skills can easily build, create, and edit subject and curriculum-specific guides quickly.

The Health Professions Division Library is also migrating many of their web pages into CampusGuides – library staff appreciate this as they can be in control of their department’s content and update it easily, even if they don’t have staff with lots of web development skills.

Q: What was the reaction of the judges to CampusGuides?

We were able to show examples of how each library has collaborated with faculty and other campus departments to build guides that are customizable for their classes and student needs – the attendees and judges LOVED this! The judges perceived the tool as organic and student-centered, with areas where students or faculty could make comments, give feedback and rate the resources provided on the Guides. They even inquired about creating a Guide for their specific program of study or classes.

Q: What do you think you’ve gained from this experience?

As mentioned before, we promoted CampusGuides as an opportunity for future collaboration and personalization. Thanks to this increased visibility, librarians have opened more opportunities for future collaboration and personalization with faculty and students. Plus, with our prize winnings, we are throwing a CampusGuides Authors appreciation luncheon bash!

Springy News – October 2010

marcbertone — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 16:28:05 +0000

The theme for our October newsletter is “mobile”! As a premier provider of useful (and cool) web apps for libraries we want to make sure we got your mobile needs covered as well. We released the mobile version of LibGuides, and the reviews have been uniformly great. We did not dive head first into mobile to get something out quickly – instead we carefully designed the mobile version from the ground up and it seems everybody loves it, which is music to our ears.

In fact, we are really excited that you are excited about LibGuides mobile, as this means everybody is going to love our upcoming mobile website builder tool! Creating mobile websites will be as easy and as fun as creating guides. We are putting the finishing touches on this new tool/module and will release it by year-end. The LibAnswers mobile interface is just about done and will be out by the end of the month.

The Newsletter also features an informative interview with the librarians at Johnson & Wales University Rhode Island Campus. They are doing some wonderful things with the LibAnswers SMS Module, and as a result their SMS Reference service is racking up huge usage numbers. No wonder Rosie (Dean of University Libraries) and her team are also known as the rock stars on campus! Great job Rosie, keep it up.

Going forward, each edition of the newsletter will feature an interview with an existing Springshare customer who will share their advice, and tips and tricks from the field about how they are making a real difference in their community by using Springshare tools and apps…

Read the complete newsletter at http://help.springshare.com/news-Oct10

Monthly LibGuides Stats – December 2009

marcbertone — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 20:13:52 +0000

What a great way to end the year – with Charles Darwin University becoming LibGuides member library #1000. Congratulations to all LibGuides sites for being part of such an amazing community of educators!

Community Sites:	1023
Librarian Accounts:	16,068
Total Guides:	66,703
Total Pages:	424,688
Unique Visitors:	792,496
Page Views:	19.6 million

Wrapping Up A Successful Webinar Series

marcbertone — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 19:45:32 +0000

Last week, Mazen Khoury and Kristiana Burk presented the final session in the ‘user experience’ webinar series. Many innovative ideas were presented during these sessions, and the response from the LibGuides user community has been overwhelmingly positive. We at Springshare would like to thank Kristiana and HowStuffWorks.com for all the hard work that went into creating these sessions, and we look forward to working with them in the future!

For those of you that were unable to attend one or more of the sessions, we have made Kristiana’s slides and videos available online at the LibGuides Help site. You should also visit HowStuffWorks LibGuides, to check out the many valuable (and reusable!) resources that they have created for the LibGuides community!

LibGuides – 200th Member Site!

marcbertone — Thu, 22 May 2008 18:26:25 +0000

Northfield Mount Hermon School joined LibGuides this morning, bringing our total site count to 200! Our membership has just about doubled since January, and we have quite a few more groups that will be joining the community in the next few months.

Thanks to everyone for making the first half of 2008 a very successful one for Springshare and our LibGuides community members!

LibGuides Member Spotlight – SCC and the BCLS

marcbertone — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 19:04:21 +0000

We wanted to take a moment to highlight two of our newest community members, and the innovative ways they are using LibGuides to provide more than just subject-guides.

Scottsdale Community College has both a “traditional” LibGuides system, as well as a second site which they are using as their library homepage. This allows the librarians to make website updates quickly and easily, without having to contact IT or a Systems Librarian whenever they want to add information to the library website. This is an interesting approach and one we expect to see more frequently as LibGuides matures with greater control of layout, customization, etc.

http://library.scottsdalecc.edu/

The Burlington County Library System has an *excellent* example of how LibGuides can be used in a public library environment. Their system contains guides for K-6 research and homework help, cultural information for new U.S. citizens, local real estate information, cooking tips, and much more. We will definitely be pointing other public libraries to the BCLS LibGuides site as an excellent “getting started” reference.

http://explore.bcls.lib.nj.us/

One Hundred (and change!)

marcbertone — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 18:14:32 +0000

Springshare is proud to announce that our LibGuides community has reached 101 member libraries – including many of the world’s most innovative academic, public and special libraries! We are amazed at how rapidly our community is growing, and how LibGuides is quickly becoming a premiere destination for research and study.

Thank you to our existing members for making LibGuides such a success, and for those of you that are considering a subscription, we look forward to having you on board soon!

For a complete list of our community members please visit http://libguides.com.

145 and Counting!

marcbertone — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 16:32:10 +0000

Located in Nova Scotia, Dalhousie University is one of the first members of the LibGuides community located outside of the United States. One of Canada’s leading universities, Dalhousie is widely recognized for outstanding academic quality and teaching, and a broad range of educational and research opportunities.

Since joining Libguides a few months ago, Dalhousie librarians have created an incredible list of 145 subject guides, ranging from Biomedical Engineering to Italian Studies. I asked Fran Nowakowski, Information Literacy Coordinator at Dalhousie, how they were able to create so much content in so little time, and this is what she had to say:

LibGuides came along at exactly the right time for us. The method we were using for our subject content was not answering our needs but we needed something in place by September. When I saw LibGuides I knew it was what we needed. The interface is very easy to use and the LibGuides team are very responsive to suggestions for improvements particularly the integration of web 2.0 elements such as meebo and del.icio.us tags. The librarians love it because it is so easy to use and enables them to respond quickly to changing needs.

Kudos to everyone at Dalhousie for creating a very impressive research tool for their patrons!

LibGuides at Dalhousie University:
http://libguides.library.dal.ca/

Dalhousie University – Engineering Guides:
http://libguides.library.dal.ca/search.php?search=engineering

Dalhousie University – Business Rearch Guide:
http://libguides.library.dal.ca/content.php?pid=570

Blast Off @ Boston College

marcbertone — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 01:37:44 +0000

Congratulations to Ken, and the rest of the team at Boston College, for taking their “LibGuides @ BC” system live this week.

It really is amazing how much they have achieved in only a few weeks time, and I’m sure the best is yet to come!

If you looking for an excellent example of what the LibGuides system is capable of, I highly recommend that you explore what BC has created at http://libguides.bc.edu.

You can also find Ken’s original announcement, as well as his “rocket” image, at http://commtopics.blogspot.com/2007/08/weve-launched-libguides-bc.html.