1. LibGuides:
Research & Beyond
Oklahoma Library Association
Conference
March 29, 2012
Chelsea Baker, Instruction & Circulation Librarian
East Central University
Dana Belcher, Assistant Library Director
East Central University
2. LibGuides Timeline
• April 26, 2011: Acquired system
• Summer 2011: Customized the
system & developed standards &
templates
• September 15, 2011: Subject guides
created for each liaison area
• Fall 2011: Began creating course
guides for each instruction session
6. Library Website Timeline
• January 2007: Innovative WebRefresher
• ACRL’s College Library Section –
College Library Website of the Month
• September 2011: Began library website
redesign process through Innovative
WebRefresher
– Design
– Information architecture
10. Old Information Organization
nt ss
poi nt u
nle
ss poi look in ere
a cce log ss
cce W to lsewh
nly r cata
O fo ly a E e
O n u K N t s or
yo men
rt
D epa
Have to
return to this
page to get to
this
information
11. New Organization
Appears on ALL webpages
Multiple access points
to ALL information
based on type of user Repeated in all guides
s
ic ture n Access points
tin g p matio repeated in USER
ota infor
R H buttons
S
PU
14. LibGuides as our CMS:
Instant Statistics
Guide/Page January February March 2012 Total
Faculty &
Staff Guide 247 149 131 527
Books,
Articles &
More Page 40 17 19 76
Reserves
Request
Form 4 6 1 11
15. LibGuides as our CMS:
Maintenance
• Link-checkers: computer and human
• Linked boxes make updating easy
• Maintenance standards for course &
subject guides
16. LibGuides as our CMS:
Content Ownership
• Responsibility
– Information
– Pages
– Collaboration
• Current step - Reusable Content
– All-in-one guide
– Separate guide
20. Next Steps
• Sharing ownership
• Google analytics
• Prepare for future redesigns
• Peer and self review
21. Contact Us!
Chelsea Baker
(580) 559-5370
cbaker@ecok.edu
Dana Belcher
(580) 559-5564
dbelcher@ecok.edu
http://library.ecok.edu
Notas del editor
Chelsea starts
CB
CB
CB
CB
DB – Four months? Doesn’t seem too long. What Chelsea failed to tell you was that she’d only been at ECU for five months! During that time, the librarians also collaborated on: Standardizing instructional handouts – something that came up during our annual evaluations These handouts, as Chelsea stated, led into the standardization of our Course Guides Policy review – another assessment project – all policies had to be reviewed and updated during the fall semester Change of personnel – Circulation Assistant That being said, I opened my big mouth and came up with yet another project – Innovative’s Webrefresher January 2007 Easy and seamless Very happy with outcome and ecstatic to win a national award However, 5 years later its time for change Webrefresher basically updates your webopac to the latest screens, icons, CSS, etc. at a nominal cost We have no one in-house with this expertise If we did, they wouldn’t have the time to dedicate Our focus was twofold: Design, which Chelsea will talk about in a moment, and Information architecture where to place the information and how to access it
CB
DB - Once we decided on a design, we sent that information to Innovative only to find out that they don’t do ‘design’ work. Their main focus is the webopac and will incorporate: color schemes, branding graphics, font sizes, and placement of buttons within the webopac. What they don’t do: Javascript (for rotating pictures) Auto-resizing of graphics when adjusting browser windows So, we went ahead with the rest of the webrefresher and then found a student, Mica, that was able to fix those things for us. She’s one of those students that you can’t allow to graduate because you don’t know what’d you do without her! After the design, we tackled the information architecture. Before, information was based solely on use with very few access points. Now, information is based on the user: who you are, how you might use it, and still some of the traditional ‘use’ we had before.
DB – The four buttons at the top of the screen came from our final design structure and can be found in the center of our main webpage. We brainstormed what each category would contain, then we tackled the user group buttons. As you can see, the students, faculty & staff, and community users all have access to the same information for the first 10 items. The same for students and faculty & staff – they have access to the same services. Here is where you can see the crossover between use and user.
DB - Before, only use taken into account: Need to find books, go to the CatPac found on the main webpage Need to order an ILL, go to services listed on the main webpage Need to find your liaison librarian – you’d need to know that is the acquisitions department responsibility, so you have to click on departments, then acquisitions, then liaison librarians For just about everything, you had to return to the main page to get to anything
CB
DB – With the webrefresher done (along with some help from Mica), we now had a great, organized, sensible main webpage to give to our patrons. However, our internal pages looked ‘beastly’ compared to our new and improved look! We didn’t have much control to the look of our internal pages. We used the university’s CMS which had many restrictions: Text-y One-dimensional We were dependent on webmaster approval (as is the case with most CMS) Hit statistics were non-existent, even when we repeatedly asked for them In November, the CMS was hit with a security breach & all logins were revoked – we were now totally dependent on the webmaster for all changes, no matter how minor What to do? Here comes my big mouth again …
DB– LibGuides was our solution! This screen shot is much more eye appealing than the previous version. Also, LibGuides provided the flexibility we needed to have that crossover between use and user that we developed during the information architecture stage. However, all LibGuides before were based on standards and templates that we created. We were starting with a blank page at this stage. It started slow, but once we figured out what, where, who, and how, it gained speed! By the time classes started in January, we had migrated over 95% of our internal content.
CB
CB—maintenance was one of our biggest problems previously
DB – This entire project, as well as the many others that we have mentioned, were all done collaboratively. Yes, collaboration makes your eyes roll and may cause you to pull out your hair, but we have found that it is the key to our success. With collaboration comes responsibility! Before, the departments were responsible for maintaining their webpages, but the rest fell mainly to me as the library’s webmaster. Now, with the different take on how we present our information, new responsibilities were developed. One person may be responsible for a LibGuide, however, others may have responsibilities for tabs or even boxes within that LibGuide. For example, the Library Employees LibGuide is mainly administrative, which falls to me. However, one of the tabs in that guide is professional presentations – all librarians are responsible for loading their presentations to this tab. Consequently, you can find this presentation loaded there. LibGuides provides the ability to assign certain guides to one or more people. One option in LibGuides that we have relied heavily on is Reusable Content. For example, we have templates that can be copied and edited. Also, we have boxes of information that can be reused, such as our hours and help boxes. By storing these in Reusable Content and ‘reusing’ them instead of copying them into other guides, we only have to update the one box in Reusable Content – all other places that have ‘reused’ that box will be automatically updated. Another example is our Electronic Resources LibGuide. This guide is the default for listing all our databases, their help guides, and short descriptions. Instead of having to copy and past or retype that information, LibGuides allows you to ‘pull’ that information (or any information from any guide) into another guide. By ‘reusing’ it, again, updates only need to be made in one place. Markers are placed in all boxes that link back to other boxes, so you can see at-a-glance where you gleaned the information. As we can see on this next slide ….
DB – The accounting LibGuide is reusing information from two other guides, reusable content and electronic resources. It’s obvious who is responsible for the electronic resources guide – that’s me as periodicals and acquisitions librarian. However, it’s not always obvious who is responsible for the reusable content – department, liaison librarian, other. That’s my next project, but I’m going to wait awhile before I open my big mouth again!
CB
DB – Collaboration – currently, the five librarians and the director all have access to create LibGuides. All of us were involved in all decisions made towards the subject & course guides, as well as the webrefresher project. Also, we found ourselves asking each other and our liaison departments for input in creating our subject, course, and internal LibGuides. What did we learn: Buy-in – by having a say in the decision process, one is more likely to buy-in to the products and content That buy-in leads directly into content ownership and content connectedness (the who, what, why, when, and how) Although it may take a little bit longer, collaboration, IMHO, allows you to get more done by involving more people. There is no way a single librarian could have accomplished all that we have talked about today, as well as worked on our various other projects and kept up-to-date with their everyday responsibilities. It was amazing to see how everyone looks at the same thing in different ways. This allowed us to think outside of the box and come up with an incredible product! CB - LibGuides is our tool—from subject guides to CMS
DB – Sharing ownership – to steal a saying from Jim Collins’ Good to Great, just like you need to get the ‘right people in the right seats on the right bus’, you also need to get the ‘right information maintained by the right people into the right slots’ - it’s time to get staff buy-in and assign them responsibilities for information ownership. Also, we need to be on the lookout for another Mica as she graduates this May. CB – Google analytics DB - Prep for future redesigns: do we have an alternative to Innovative’s WebRefresher? If not, do we want to pay III in five years, or is it time to start training someone? If we do opt to train, will that person be here in five years? Will we need to change? YES, but who knows what will be available in five years. Ah, another project … CB – Peer and self review