Springshare Support Blog

I am pleased to announce the availability of the link checker function in LibGuides. The system will check for broken links inside LibGuides boxes (for all boxes except the rich text box type) twice a month and produce the report which will enable you to fix these broken links easily. The function is available on the main admin screen, please see the screenshot below.

As always, your feedback and suggestions are always appreciated so try out the link checker and let us know what you think.

We’ve achieved a lot of “firsts” in the Library software world in terms of web 2.0 stuff - LibGuides was one of the first commercial library software with a Facebook app (we now have three), among the first to integrate with Del.icio.us, etc.

Today I am pleased to announce another “first” and, perhaps, the coolest one yet - Twitter integration. Now when you publish a new guide you can broadcast the news on Twitter for all your faithful followers to see. Anybody subscribed to your Twitter updates will see the name of your newly published guide and the URL to access it. It’s a great way to advertise your guides to the Twitter universe (which is getting bigger by the minute)!

Pretty cool stuff, you must admit. We thought so too…

The “post to twitter” option is available on the change status screen, when you go to change the status of your guide to “published”.

I’d like to thank our tech team, especially the resident Twitter-expert Marc, for implementing another “first”web 2.0 integration in the commercial library software world, thereby solidifying the LibGuides’ position as the leading web 2.0 platform for libraries! 

After our server upgrade went as smoothly as possible (zero downtime for patrons), we were alerted today that several (5, to be exact) of our clients were not able to access the new servers. After scratching our heads and looking at the problem from every possible angle (I’d like to thank our clients who worked with us on figuring it out), one of our genius techies (i.e. not me) said “it must be the bogon issue - their network administrators should check their bogon filters for the 174.*.*.* address. This network was only recently opened up by IANA. Bogon filters are filters designed to remove bogus IP addresses from being routed or spoofed. This is now a valid network and should not be filtered” (for more info, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogon_filtering)

And – sure enough – our new servers are on 174.* network and hence the reason why any network with obsolete bogon filter rules had problems accessing them. Even though this was not a LibGuides server issue (nor LibGuides problem in general) we are still bummed out that these 5 clients had their LibGuides access interrupted for part of the day, and we apologize for this - if we could have fixed it immediately we would, but this was out of our hands.

So, this should be a lesson to every network admin out there - keep those network rules and bogon filters up to date - because these obsolete filters not only prevent you from accessing LibGuides, but also from accessing many other (valid) sites who happen to be on this newly-approved 174.* network. The good news is that 98% of our client sites already had these bogon filters updated, but we want to help these 2% get on the train as well

If you are having problems accessing LibGuides, have your IT folks check the bogon filters for 174.* range - this is most likely the culprit.

This is really cool! We utilized the Google Books API to create a new content box type called “Google Books Search Box”. This box enables visitors to search the Google Books service, and even read the full-text of books, where available. Check out the screenshot:

Besides enabling your users to search Google Books inside your guide, you can also define a “default search query” whose results will load when the user views the page initially. At the bottom of the box there is a always a link to get more results at the Google Books website.

We’re very excited about the Google Books box in LibGuides. It is yet another example of LibGuides’ deep integration with other web services. Your guides aggregate various content sources in one place, providing a very convenient and useful resource to your patrons. In addition to accessing many resources provided by your library, with the Google Books box your patrons can access the vast Google Books database, all within LibGuides. Pretty cool stuff. Try it out - your patrons will appreciate it!

Please let us know what you think, and how we can further improve LibGuides. Also, check out the other new box type we announced today - the Feedback box. Here’s the blog post about it.

As most of our LibGuides admins know, there is a  system-wide customization screen in the Admin functions area (under the System Settings tab). This screen enables you to customize the look and feel of your LibGuides system. With a bit of knowledge of html and css style sheets, you can go a step further and truly customize every aspect of the look and feel of your LibGuides.

To help you along, we created a LibGuide called “Customizing the Look and Feel of LibGuides” - it is available at http://demo.libguides.com/customization. The guide also contains a gallery of links to LibGuides systems that took full advantage of the customization options to achieve a custom look and feel. You will find these links under “The Gallery” tab. So, check out this guide for the inspiration and for how-to in terms of customizing your LibGuides.

Customizing the Look and Feel of LibGuides

Tiffany sent us another great tip for the blog - this time explaining how she created a custom search plug-in for her LibGuides site at DePauw University.  Here are instructions on how you can create one for your library.

1) Start out at the MOZDEV website located at http://mycroft.mozdev.org/submitos.html.  Check the “show full instructions” box so that you can get some assistance creating your plug-in.

2) Provide values for the first six fields on the page; we have a LibGuides image that you are welcome to use if you would like: http://springshare.com/blog-images/libguides.gif

3) Use the following address for the search URL, but be sure to replace “demo.libguides.com” with your LibGuides URL: http://demo.libguides.com/search.php?search={searchTerms}

4) Select one of the Education categories and enter a comment describing the plug-in; the rest of the values can be left at their default values or can be customized as needed.  Click the Generate and Submit buttons to finish creating the component.

5)  After submitting the plug-in, you will be taken to a page where you can install it in your browser.  You should bookmark or save this URL so you can provide it to other librarians and patrons as needed.

Once the plug-in is installed, you can search your LibGuides site by typing in the FireFox search bar (top-right corner) and selecting the LibGuides icon from the drop-down menu.  This will take you directly to the LibGuides search results page for whatever term(s) you entered.  Pretty neat!

We have created a custom search provider for the LibGuides Community site, which allows you to search across the entire universe of LibGuides content.  As of this afternoon that covers 42,000 pages on 6500 subject guides, created by 3000 users at 176 libraries worldwide.  This is a great resource for researchers as well as content creators, as it exposes users to subject information and ideas from all over the world.

Custom search providers can also be created for Internet Explorer; for detailed instructions please see our earlier blog post titled “Adding LibGuides Search Provider to IE7“.

Tiffany was nice enough to send us an email this week, showing an innovative way that DePauw University has expanded their LibGuides system beyond subject-based research.  She describes the project focus as follows…

“While we value our role in supporting curricular and research needs, academic librarians should also support their students’ needs for extracurricular, recreational, health, and other information, just as a public library does. We can and should provide resources about current and campus events, such as visiting speakers, colloquia, festivals, and exhibits.”

In order to attract and keep visitors, these “extracurricular” pages must be even more dynamic than those required for a specific course or lecture.  To accomplish this, Tiffany and her colleagues have made use of the RSS, audio and video support provided in LibGuides to create guides that are both current and engaging to students.  Here are just a few examples from their site:

National Poetry Month
College & University News
Election 2008
DePauw’s Food Initiatives

Tiffany and Kathryn will be hosting a poster session on this topic at this year’s summer ALA conference in Anaheim.  We will be sure to post more information on this, and any other LibGuides related sessions, a few weeks before the show.

We are thrilled to introduce a new chapter in the LibGuides (r)evolution - LibGuides community site, at  http://community.libguides.com. You can also access this site by clicking on the “Community” tab on the LibGuides admin screen. The community site makes it possible to search guides of all our member institutions. Imagine the possibilities - a global community of thousands of cutting-edge librarians (2,500 as of March 2008), publishing useful content (4,800 guides and counting), sharing ideas, best practices, and collaborating on creating LibGuides.

Here’s an example: Say you are a business librarian/liaison at the Upstate Memorial Library. You can log on to the community site and search for all business-related content at all LibGuides member libraries. You can search the guide titles/descriptions, subjects, tags, and guide authors. The full text search for guides is coming soon as well!

It gets even better: now you have the ability share content within the LibGuides community. You can use *any* guide from any system as a template when creating your guides. LibGuides becomes a social network and a global community of librarian-created content. We’re psyched! And we hope you are, too!

Sharing LibGuides content across institutions
 Here’s how to share content with other LibGuides librarians.

1. Log on to the community site, at http://community.libguides.com.
2. Check out Featured/Popular/Recent guides, or search for guides using keywords or by author.
3. When you find the guide you want to use as a template for your own guide, contact the guide owner (their contact info is in the profile box on the right) and get their permission to use the guide as a template. It is very important you get the guide author’s permission first (you’ll see why, in step 6).
4. When you log on to your institution’s LibGuides system to create your new guide, one of the options for the guide template will be “Use a guide from one of community institutions” (at the very bottom of the drop-down box for templates).
   
5. When you select “Use a guide from one of community institutions” option, the pop-up will expand and ask you for the URL of a guide from another institution that you’d like to use as a template. Paste the URL of a guide you found in step 3.
   
6. LibGuides will find this guide and copy its contents into your newly created guide. It will also send an email notification to the original guide owner telling them you used their guide as a template. Your email address, your institution, and the name of your new guide will be listed in this email sent to the original owner.

The ability for our member libraries to share ideas and best practices in creating content, and then to share that content and collaborate with each other is something we think will be extremely valuable to our clients. It adds a new dimension to LibGuides and makes it even more useful.

One final note - we have built triggers into the system (like email notifications to guide owners) when you use someone else’s guide as a template when creating yours. Please respect other people’s work and always check with the guide owners to make sure it is okay to use their guide as a template.

As always, thanks for your continued support, and welcome to the LibGuides social network! Facebook  who?!? (just kiddin’, Facebook. Don’t get upset and delete our facebook apps from your directory. Please!)

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/

Widgets are the unsung heroes of LibGuides. They are a great way to embed your LibGuides into blogs, course management systems, social networks, etc.

We’ve made an enhancement to the statistics package in LibGuides to enable you to track the number of visits to your guides from widgets. In other words, when you look at the statistics for an individual guide, you will be able to see how many visits came from the widget (as well as from the forthcoming API calls). See the screenshot below.