Springshare Support Blog

We’re pleased to announce the http://bestof.libguides.com website – a collection of what we think are the shiniest examples of LibGuides across all our client institutions. The best part is that all content on the Best Of site can be freely reused and shared (that’s one of the rules of being featured on the site – guide owners must be willing to let others reuse and copy their awesomeness). No need to reinvent the wheel, and this way everybody benefits from the collective wisdom of the tens of thousands of librarians who create content in LibGuides.

We are also working on having official prizes, automatic idea submissions, voting, etc. so the Best Of site will only get better – this is just the beginning of great things to come. We will be adding new content every time we find something that makes us go “Wow, this is a great guide”  (we always contact the guide owner first, to get their permission to feature their work). If you have suggestions for what type of content you want to see there, or if you want to submit your or your colleagues’ guides please let us know, we’re all ears - support@springshare.com

So, there you have it – in a spirit of Valentine’s Day (a few days early but since Valentine’s is on Sunday we had to compromise a bit): Announcing the Sites We Love on the Day For Love – LibGuides Best Of, http://bestof.libguides.com. Check the site often because we will be adding new content every couple of weeks. You should also follow us on twitter - http://twitter.com/springshare - as we will be tweeting the Best Of updates/additions as well.

As always, please send us your suggestions, ideas, kudos – support@springshare.com.

Online discussions of LibGuides are coming at a fast-and-furious pace these days; here are a few of our favorite blog posts and reviews from the last few weeks:

Loving LibGuides – The Unquiet Librairian
A week or so ago, my library’s subscription to LibGuides went live!  I have designed three research pathfinders so far, and I am totally in love with the clean design I can produce with ease…

Instructional Technologies, Teaching & Learning in Medicine, Web 2.0: Oncology, LibGuides and Delicious - EBM and Clinical Support Librarians@UCHC
Librarians at Lyman Maynard Stowe Library purchased a subscription to a course management system called LibGuides in August 2008.  It has proven to be a good investment…

LibGuides as Pathfinders – Archipelago
At ALA in Anaheim this summer, I discovered LibGuides, and my teaching has changed dramatically because of it…

Teaching Library Stuff - The Logical Operator
…I wonder if the idea that this guide was created for them, and them specifically, pulled them in little more deeply. Not to mention having an online tool that helps them penetrate the navigation scheme of the library home page and get right to the important stuff…

We have not highlighted a LibGuides related blog post in some time, but when we saw the post on the Gonzobrarian blog today, we couldn’t resist!

One of the fruitions of my library’s attendance at a recent conference was to become more fully introduced to the increasingly popular service called LibGuides. After attending a session on it, the first thing my director mentioned was something to the effect of “I don’t care it’s coming out of the budget, but we’re getting this.”  We’ve got it, and it’s living up to the hype.

Now that’s an awesome start to a very positive review of LibGuides!!  Be sure to check out the rest of the post here:

http://gonzobrarian.wordpress.com/2008/09/10/libguides/

Library Lady Dee posted about adapting LibGuides to document internal library procedures and policies.  While the “hit by a bus” analogy is a bit of a downer, the idea of reaching out from beyond the grave to instruct on ILL intricacies makes up for it.  Thank you Dee, and please be careful crossing the street!

Cindi has created a great LibGuides intro video for the BIGWIG Social Software Showcase 2008 and will also be hosting a LibGuides chat tomorrow afternoon (June 28th).  Be sure to check out citegeist.com for more information.  Thanks Cindi!

Finally, an important post found on the University of Iowa library news page; “We have recently added a guide with information on flood recovery – and with special attention to public health issues. This guide is available at http://guides.lib.uiowa.edu/floodrecovery.  All of these resources are available to the public.”

We recently came across a post from Sara at the world famous Tactless Librarian blog, that presents an interesting use for LibGuides.  Sara has been creating research guides for course-specific instruction sessions held at the library.  These “class shortcut pages” contain all the information presented during the instruction session, including reference tools, polls, and of course links to those expensive subscription databases:

“One database, Literary Reference Center, got 80 hits that month from my LibGuide alone.  If I had done my typical session the students would have forgotten the database and gone to Academic Search Premier because it was the first on our  list of databases.”

To help promote these instruction sessions Sara has been providing faculty with links to specific shortcut pages, which are then embedded into the campus courseware system.  In addition to reinforcing the lessons learned during the instruction session, this also creates an excellent integration point for the library’s online reference program:

“The guide solved a variety of problems.  First, it allowed us to link to a Meebo chat … with the librarian who made the guide if they put a Meebo box in.  Any guide made with our reference account gets the Ask A Librarian box because it’s on that profile.”

It is great to see librarians finding new ways to use LibGuides, and Sara’s approach to course-specific research guides is definitely one worth mentioning.  You can read her original post, as well as leave your own comments and questions, at
http://www.librarygirl.org/wordpress/archives/97.

We are happy to report that LibGuides made the front page of The Butler Collegian last week. The article outlines all the right reasons for the success of LibGuides at Butler, and echoes what we’ve heard from our member libraries world-wide.

All of us at Springshare are very proud that LibGuides is bringing libraries and patrons closer together and changing the ways libraries deliver information to patrons. As one Butler student puts it, “(LibGuides) helps save a lot of time and makes researching more effective.”

You can read the entire article on our website:
http://springshare.com/pdf/butler_collegian.pdf

Librarian “Mick” is an avid LibGuides user of North Eastern Illinois University’s LibGuides. He has put together several great LibGuides-related posts on his blog. One post reveals his (excellent and very timely) thoughts about what Pathfinders 2.0 should look like – check it out at ”LibGuides and my Philosophy of Pathfinders 2.0”

In addition, Mick has also created several “How to design a LibGuide” posts. Check out Part 1 (Rich Text Box), Part 2 (Web Links), Part 3 (RSS Feeds/Podcasts), Part 4 (Videos and del.icio.us), Part 5 (Utility Boxes), and Part 6 (Profile boxes).

 Great stuff Mick, keep it up!

I will keep this one short and sweet…thanks to Wayne @ ‘Princeton Academic Librarian’ and Bob @ ‘Striking Thoughts’ for their recent reviews of LibGuides.  Links and excerpts below…

Academic Librarian
http://blogs.princeton.edu/librarian/2007/10/libguides.html

“For those who don’t know, Libguides is a site that lets you create locally branded subject and library research guides that are very easy to make and take advantage of lots of social softwarey stuff. Here’s what our trial version looks like. Here’s what the developed and implemented site at Boston Collegelooks like. Libguides has all sorts of features I haven’t used yet, such as chat and rss and alerts, but the main part of it works like a wiki. It’s easy to add content and make it come out looking good…”

Striking Thoughts
http://www.taozenchi.com/bcpblog/?p=741

“Our library just subscribed to LibGuides and I have to say that I am very pleased. We are still figuring it out and only a handful of us have even started to create a guide. Still, I have to say that my initial opinion of the product is positive. Aside from the 2.0 aspect of social networking, I think its strongest feature would be ease of use. It took me about 1.5 hours to create a guide and the guide looks very slick and professional. In short: You end up with an end-product that makes your library look like it’s on the cutting edge of technology…”

Special thanks to Scott Pfitzinger over at BiblioTech Web for one of the most glowing LibGuides reviews we have received to date.  Here is an excerpt from his post…

Last week I found out about one of the coolest library technologies that’s come down the pike. It’s a Web 2.0 application designed for Library 2.0. It’s called LibGuides and it’s worth getting excited about.  It’s a system for providing information and resources to library patrons in an engaging and organized way, but without the information providers (mainly librarians) needing to learn code or some complicated system. (I’ll refer to the people creating content in LibGuides as librarians from here on in, although they can certainly be non-librarians.) Statistics are even kept automatically, so you can see how many times each link or file was actually clicked on. They count click-throughs, not page views, so your statistics are more accurate…

Please visit BiblioTech Web at http://www.bibliotechweb.com/archives/2007/09/25/libguides/ for the complete post, and be sure to leave Scott a comment letting him know your thoughts on LibGuides!

There has been quite a bit of blog activity regarding Springshare and LibGuides lately.  Special thanks to the following blogging librarians (blogarians?) for their recent reviews and comments regarding our community!

MichaelRoy @ The Kenyon LIS Blog
Elisabeth @ Elisabeth Leonard on Libraries
Ken @ tracking changes/changing tracks