Calendars/Event Management

• The Wait List feature is here! If more people want to register for an event than you have space for, enable a waiting list
• Calendar APIs and RSS feeds continue to expand – we’ve added support for pulling events from multiple calendars in the Event APIs, and better diacritic support for RSS feeds
• Email templates are fully customizable - customize the automated emails when patrons register/are waitlisted for/cancel events!

My Scheduler

• We’ve added a location field – when people book appointments, they’ll know where to go!
• Do you have LibGuides? When you customize your profile, click the checkbox to add the Schedule an Appointment widget!
• Embed the widget multiple times on the same page – show the availability of everyone on your team in one public interface!
• Email templates are fully customizable – send automated confirmation and cancellation emails when patrons book appointments, and customize their text!

Room Booking

• Room Booking Explorer – view booking history, filter on tons of options, search on patron information (name, email, group nickname, etc.) and export information to Excel!
• We’ve added patron “nicknames” for their own bookings – this nickname shows up in the public Room schedule, so individuals can see where their group is meeting
• New Photo field -  show patrons which room they’re signing up for.
• Better yet, that room photo, as well as the entire room booking process, is included in the Mobile Optimized Room Booking view!

Plus, we’ve tweaked the Room Booking permission settings, based on your feedback:

• More Booking Duration values – whether you’re working with 30 minute time-slots or 54 minute periods, LibCal’s got you covered!
• Patrons can sign up for a room “Before Slot’s Ending Time” (ie halfway through a slot)
• We added an option to restrict “Booking in Advance”, so admins can choose how long into the future a patron can book a room. 1 week? 1 Month? 3 Months? OK!

Whew – that’s a lot of features! We hope you’re enjoying LibCal – from early user feedback, we’re hearing it’s the easiest, most intuitive calendar/event management/personal scheduler/room booking tool available. If you haven’t tried it yet, sign up for your 3-for-free today! http://springshare.com/libcal

• The new Dashboard screen (you’ll see it when you first log in) is clean and (we hope!) easy to navigate. You can always get back to the Dashboard from any screen, thanks to the link in the top-left corner of the menu bar.
• Admins – the Admin Alert Boxes are here! You can create system messages, reminders, links to your help and style guidelines, etc. and display them right on the screen where your content creators are! You have 2 alert boxes available – one on the Dashboard, and another on the Create Guide screen.
• RSS Feeds – The Tools menu has all the tools you know and love (API, Widgets, Link Checker & Bookmarklet), plus the new RSS Feeds tool! Instead of hunting around through guides, user profiles, etc. to find the RSS Feeds for your site, we figured we’d make things easy on you and put all the feeds in one spot.
• Add-on Module – The Modules menu has a new link for Add-on Module users – this offers a quick way to upload images and manage your image library, and gives you a quick way to access your site’s XML export and individual Guide Backups (HTML)

As you’ll quickly notice, the biggest change in this update is organization. The administrative organization of the system hasn’t changed since LibGuides was introduced in 2007. In that time, we’ve added hundreds of features and tools, and the administrative interface was reaching a critical mass. We really hope you’ll find the new interface intuitive, and we’re excited to hear what you think!

-Slaven and the Springy Team

As an aside, we know that many folks are experiencing issues with Syndetics images displaying in guides. This issue is not related to yesterday’s update – thanks to an unseasonable Nor’easter that hit the East Coast over the weekend, Syndetics servers appear to be down. We apologize for the inconvenience, but we know our friends at Syndetics are working hard to get things back online as soon as they can!

A big round of applause and congrats goes out to all librarians creating and maintaining guides to publish and share information. Librarians are the best information/knowledge professionals out there and, in our opinion, many of these guides represent the highest quality information found on the internet. We love seeing this growth – more guides means more content is being shared, more ideas are being exchanged, and better quality information is getting out there.

Keep up the great work – onwards and upwards to the next milestone! Dare we say 1,000,000 Guides? With more libraries joining our community every day, we’ll get there sooner than you think!

This update will affect all content creators in LibGuides & CampusGuides – System Administrators, Librarians, and anyone with an account in the system. We put together a guide - http://help.springshare.com/lgcg-sei - to help you with the transition. It has detailed information about the new stuff and a screenshot tour of the new interface. Please read it carefully to get acquainted with the new look and organization.

The actual code update will occur over the weekend of October 29-30. There will be no system downtime during this code update.

As always, we’re excited to hear what you think – if you have any questions, ideas, or kudos, don’t be shy – let us know!

http://help.springshare.com/lgcg-sei 

When you record a transaction, make sure you’re recording start and end time using the Time Stamp field:

Head to the Data Explorer, and generate a report based on any combination of fields and values. You’ll see a new report - Duration Analysis. Use this tab to discover:

1. Total time spent on all transactions (how much time was spent delivering instruction/reference sessions?)
2. Maximum & Minimum transaction durations (what’s the longest and shortest session time?)
3. Average & Median transaction durations (what’s the average duration of your sessions?)
4. Quick Links to the Longest and Shortest transactions (what’s this session that took 300 minutes?)

Plus, we’ve added a new report filter! The Optional Duration Filter filters reports based on transaction duration – use it to discover things like:

1. Which transactions took < 30 minutes?
2. Which transactions took > 60 minutes?
3. Which transactions lasted exactly 45 minutes?

Our new Instance Designer makes it easy to fully customize the look and feel of your instance! It has everything from reordering fields using a drag-and-drop interface, to being able to define instructions and help text for each field. The new interface makes it easy to customize what your instance recording screen will look like.

And, we’re adding a new tool to your Data Ninja arsenal – LibAnalytics Widgets. Hold on to your hats, because we’re about to turn the concept of LibAnalytics “instances” on its ear!

When we talk about ”instances”, all we mean is “a set of data that libraries want to track”. Up until now, the librarians were the only ones who could record this data in LibAnalytics. But we got to thinking – what if we open data-recording to users? What about collecting patron feedback? Satisfaction surveys, feedback on library instruction, website feedback, database trials… why should librarians always be the ones entering data? Open the data recording and collection to everyone, and then use our awesome analytics tools to make sense of all your data.

Thus, LibAnalytics Widgets were born! Forged in the dark fires of our ninja enclave, LibAnalytics widgets give you the power to collect user feedback right from the source. For example, let’s say you want to collect feedback about your library website. Create an instance for “Website Feedback”, and embed a widget on your library website. You can have the feedback widget appear on page load, on page exit, on button click, etc. Examples:

Floating Button Widget (note the feedback button on the left side of the screen)

Embedded Text Widget (note the purple area below the banner)

Or send an email to faculty with a link to your survey, like this: http://demo.libanalytics.com/p.php?in=238

LibAnalytics now enables you to collect all kinds of data, from all kinds of sources, all in one place. You can browse the data, find patterns, generate statistics, and analyze stuff like there’s no tomorrow.

If you thought it doesn’t get any better, well it does – a single instance of LibAnalytics is free, so sign up today and get started on your Data Ninja skills.

A free subscription to LibCal comes with all the bells and whistles – event registration management, personal schedulers, and room booking management. You get 3 calendars, 3 personal schedulers, and 3 room bookings – all free!

And our free LibAnalytics instance is also the whole enchilada – collect data points, record unlimited transactions, and view/download awesome reports.

We say this all the time, but we want you to know – we love being a part of the library community. We love working with clients and creating web apps that solve real problems for libraries. Giving something back for free, especially in these difficult budget times, is a way for us to say “thank you” for your continued support, and the trust you’ve placed in us.

With that in mind, we hope you’ll check out LibCal and LibAnalytics and sign up today!

• Full-text Search has arrived – WOO HOO! You can now search the full text of question and answer contents, both in the public search screens, and in the KnowledgeBase Explorer. This may add more question hits per search so…
• We’ve redesigned the search landing page. Now, instead of returning search results on the same page (potentially pushing the question form down the page into oblivion), patrons will see a spiffy new page with search results on the left, and the question form on the right. Check it out, it’s cool!
• File Attachment upgrades – we have 2 major changes to share: 1)You can now include file attachments when answering private questions. 2)Hey, did I just say attachmentS, plural? You bet I did! Public and Private questions can now have multiple file attachments.
• New Account Type: Analytics Only (for Reference Analytics clients) – We’ve added a new account type that only allows access to the Reference Analytics transaction screen. This new level allows people to record transactions, and doesn’t allow access to the incoming question queues, creating public answers in the knowledgebase, etc.

Today is an exciting day! We are announcing a new feature as part of our Lounge Extreme Makeover – Groups!

What are Groups? Groups are micro-communities where you can easily share ideas, get questions answered and discuss strategies with like-minded peers. We’ve created 10 Groups, so far – feel free to join as many Groups as you’d like  where you’ll become part of a community interested in the same themes and topics!

How do I join a group?

Simple! Just click on the Groups tab at the top of the Springsharelounge.com Website and you’ll see a listing of all of the groups. Click on a group that interests you, read the description and click the JOIN button on the right-side. That’s it – easy peasy!

Once I’ve Joined a Group – What Now?

Get the conversation-ball rolling! Post a Group Discussion Forum or send a message to the Group. Leave a comment on the Group’s wall or scroll through a list of all of the Group members and chat with people one-on-one. It’s all easy with Groups!

Last, but not least, these Groups are designed with YOU in mind. What does that mean? Well, it means that if you have an idea for a Group and want to be the Group Leader – let us know!

All the best,

The Springshare Team

So here is what’s on the horizon.

The first stage of the redesign will take place the week of August 15^th – the lounge will look much prettier! Take a gander at the new look & feel of the site:

Lounge Redesign

Phase two of the Lounge Redesign involves the roll-out of groups. We want to make it easier for librarians to network, exchange ideas, get questions answered, and discuss strategies with like-minded peers. We’ll be creating groups in the Lounge based around common themes or topics – for example the ‘Guides in Instruction Group’ or the ‘K-12 LibGuiders Group’ or even the ‘Mobile Design & Usability Group’. By joining (and creating!) groups that interest you, you’ll become part of a micro community of ‘Guiders interested in the same themes and topics – these micro-communities will be a great way to foster discussions, get ideas, and get inspired!

Got a suggestion for a group? Tell us! We’re also looking for a few great librarians to act as group leaders – if you’re ready to help get some conversations rolling, let us know!

We are super excited about our Lounge redesign and we think you’ll be excited too!

All the best,

The Springshare Team