Springshare Support Blog

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.

We are excited to announce the availability of two new LibGuides content box types - the Feedback Box and the Google Books Search box (to be discussed in a separate blog post).

The Feedback box enables guide authors to “standardize” collection of feedback about their guides. The box is very simple to create - when adding a new box to your guide, simply select the ”Feedback Box” from the list of available box types. This will create a box that looks something like this:

Size-wise, this is an ideal box for the side columns. Just like with every other box type, you can customize the intro text (e.g. the “Let us know what you think…” text in the screenshot above). You can not, however, customize the actual questions (3 questions) - we designed this box to be “short-and-sweet”, and standardized across all guides, because our experience and user testing shows that visitors are not as likely to provide feedback and suggestions if they have to fill out long forms. The shorter the form, the more chance people will respond. If you need to create elaborate feedback questions, you can always use our “Polls” box type to create custom polls.

The results of the user’s feedback are emailed to the guide owner (and to the page owner, if someone else other than the guide owner has created the page in question).

Marc has created a pretty cool Google Maps mashup which shows the locations of all our LibGuides member libraries. Check it out at http://community.libguides.com/community_map.php. You can zoom in and out, and clicking on any blue push pins will reveal the institution name as well as their LibGuides URL.  

The map is also available from the main Community Site (http://community.libguides.com) , by clicking on the “Member Map” link. We will be updating this map with every new client, so keep checking it regularly - until you can’t see the earth from all the blue pins

http://community.libguides.com/community_map.php

Here are the most recent cummulative stats for the LibGuides community.

Several users have sent us emails in the last few days asking why their del.icio.us boxes, which used to work fine, are now only showing a very limited set of tags. After looking into the issue in depth, the conclusion is that - for now - we can’t do anything about this because it’s a problem with the del.icio.us api code. We get del.icio.us tags to display in LibGuides by using  the code provided by del.icio.us,  and that worked fine ever since we introduced the feature (we never changed the code) until this week when things suddenly stopped working properly.

Del.icio.us folks are clearly changing the code on their end, and it is our hope that this is only because they are gearing up for the launch of Del.icio.us v2, i.e. the new version and are just going thru some last minute reshuffling/changing of code and the API. There are many other people, unrelated to LibGuides, that are having the same problem (see http://blog.delicious.com/blog/2008/07/do-you-know-where-your-password-is.html#comment-24308 ).

So, we’ll just have to be a bit patient and see if they fix this soon because they know it’s a problem. If not, we will have to think of other ways to extract this information and show it inside LibGuides boxes. This will be a rather difficult to do  without the delicious code working properly.

 Stay tuned… We apologize for this problem, and wish that other web 2.0 services were as reliable as LibGuides

The growth of LibGuides has been nothing short of amazing, but the best part is that we are just getting started! New libraries are signing up every day, so the current statistics (300 libraries, 5000 librarians using the system, 11,500 guides created with 70,000 subject pages) will look like small potatoes 6 months from now. To ensure the smooth growth of our community, and to be able to handle the increasead load we are upgrading the LibGuides server infrastructure.

After we stopped drooling over the specs of the new servers (the latest dual quad-core Intel cpus, 4 gb of ram, powerful Cisco firewall, etc. - don’t want to bore you with all the details but trust us, they are awesome), we installed the servers at our data center, so the next step is to do a lot of testing, and finally to move all databases and systems from the old servers to the new ones.

There will be a planned 1 hour downtime during the actual system migration, tentatively scheduled between August 10th and August 15th. Five days before the migration, we will inform all local system admins about the exact date and time. This is just an advanced notice because you (sys admins) will also need to do something on your part to complete the upgrade - depending on the status of your custom domain mapping. This is very important, so please read carefully: 

• If your LibGuides system is not setup with the custom domain mapping (i.e. your system is on the domain something.libguides.com) you do not need to do anything on your end.
• If you have the custom domain mapping (i.e. your system is on something.yourdomain.edu/net/org) AND your IT  folks in charge of your domain have created a cname alias for your libguides domain you do not need to do anything on your end.
• If you have the custom domain mapping AND your IT folks in charge of your domain have created an A record for your libguides domain and pointed it to LibGuides servers IP, you will need to tell them to update the A domain record with the new IP (which we will give to you in an email informing you about the exact downtime date/time, 5 days before the upgrade). This change needs to happen either during our upgrade or after the upgrade - do not have them change the IP before the upgrade because then your system will not be reachable prior to the upgrade.

Hence, what you (libguides admins) should do now is contact the IT folks in charge of your domain and ask them if they created a cname alias or an A record for your custom LibGuides domain. Depending on their answer, read the previous paragraph again and act accordingly :) 

We do not anticipate moving the IPs again so once this change is completed you (and we) should be fine for the next few years at least. In order to ensure the smooth upgrade, please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions - support {at} springshare dot com and we’ll quickly answer any questions or concerns.

All libguides admins will get an email 5 days before the upgrade with the timing of the downtime and the IP address which the IT folks on your end need to update if they created an A record for your domain.

We rolled out another set of new LibGuides features this weekend. There are a lot of little things in this release, like code optimizations which will make the pages load faster, but the main new features are:

1. Sys admins now have a real user account management console, from which they can create new accounts, promote existing accounts to admin-level (and demote them as well), reset passwords, and delete user accounts. If you are a LibGuides admin, check out the new console, you’ll be impressed. On the main admin page, click on the “Manage Other Accounts” link. See screenshot below.
   
2. New API function for embedding your LibGuides profile box elsewhere (on any html page).
3. New API function for embedding the LibGuides search box on any webpage. This box is similar in function to ebsco or proquest-type widgets which many of our users embed into their guides. Now you can embed the LibGuides search box which will search your local LibGuides system. See example below:
   

   Search LibGuides Demo:

Both of these new API calls are available on the “API Utility” page, under the “Widgets & API” tab on the main admin screen.

Here are the most recent cummulative stats for the LibGuides community.

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.”

Our new website is live at http://springshare.com and we think it came out great!

Be sure to check out the new video on the LibGuides page.