Spring cleaning your LibGuides

I'm in the process of revamping my library's LibGuides, and I've come across a few small changes you can make to your guides that make a world a difference for design and usability. First of all, as far as headers/banners go, I am NOT a graphic designer, so I kept it simple, with just the school logo, and "Library Research Guides" in our official font. I don't recommend random images and color-fading if you're not really, really good at it. Otherwise it looks like a page for your local pre-K, coded with Microsoft Word.

old design

new design

Second, take advantage of SpringShare's excellent documentation. As a company that markets guide-creation software, they really put their money where their mouth is. Seriously, they've created a guide for pretty much everything. Here are some I found particularly useful:

• Changing your banner/adding an image map to your banner
• Customizing LibGuides CSS
• Creating a database A-Z guide with the Serials Solutions importer
• Creating search boxes for your catalog/individual databases

As the library's LibGuides admin, I'm currently building a template that all librarians can start from when creating new guides. They are free to not use it if they don't want to, but if the majority of them do use it, this will ensure some consistency across guides. It also acts as a repository for all the custom search-boxes I've built, so other librarians can pick and choose which ones they want to add to their guides.

I've also created a hidden tab (hidden from public view, that is. It's visible to anyone signed in through the admin interface.) I'm using this tab to post instructions, screenshots, and tips for guide creators. I'm also using it as a content repository for boxes I want to be available, but that don't necessarily have a logical home in the template itself (more on this in a minute...)

I've recommended that users link to boxes in the template, rather than copying them, so the template can also act as a content hub, where changes can be made in one place and pushed to all guides linking to the content. This is also why it's a good idea to import your database A-Z list into LibGuides, even if you have one on your library website. If librarians link to links in the database A-Z guide, it will automatically pull the description (which can be hidden or changed if they want) and it will allow you to make changes to database links and names in one place, that, again, will be pushed to all guides that use those links.

I've also noticed that most libraries that use LibGuides just use the default homepage options, which include a list of guides (featured, popular or recent,) a random user profile, email sign-up and/or a tag cloud. But you can choose instead to display a box from elsewhere in the site, by just entering the box id. So, on my hidden template page, I created a box of popular links (I called them "quick links") and put that on the homepage. I also replaced one of the boxes with our "help" box, that contains our various methods of contact. A good example of a nice customized LibGuides homepage is Worcester Poly's site: http://libguides.wpi.edu/

I also like how Rutgers made their homepage a complete list of guides, listed alphabetically on one tab, and by discipline on another: http://libguides.rutgers.edu/home

This is still a work-in-progress, so if anyone has any other helpful hints, please leave them in the comments!

MISSION LIBGUIDES: A Guide to Creating Guides that Aren't Awful

I've been tasked by my director to somehow wrangle our LibGuides implementation into shape. Apparently the library subscribed to the software sometime last year, and librarians have slowly been migrating their subject guides from the CUNY-grown SRMS (Subject Management Resource System) to LibGuides. LibGuides offers much more flexibility and back-end usability than SRMS (which was maintained by one person, with all users sending their edits to the e-resources librarian.) Having a system that allows each subject librarian to create and update their own guides makes much more sense, but the ease-of-use and flexibility have a DARK SIDE. Yes. Dark side. In all caps.

So all the librarians, who have varying degrees of technical expertise, are copying and pasting content, willy-nilly, into hastily-created guides in the LibGuides system. Some of them have used the software in the past, and so are comfortable removing unwanted formatting (which often requires you to toggle out of the WYSIWYG and into the html editor) and customizing pages and tabs by adding, removing, or changing the widths of columns. Some of them are understandably daunted by guides that contain giant text and random fonts that they never chose.

I plan on giving a workshop for staff in the coming months, to cover topics such as pasting into a text editor to remove formatting (I've also been installing PureText on people's computers for them. I use it myself, and love it for instant conversion to plain text.) I'll also be going over how to add, remove, and adjust column widths, and when to use special content boxes (such as for multimedia or books from the catalog.)

While putting together this workshop, I've realized that while I can show people how to use the software, I don't really know what to tell them about design. Personally, I can't stand cluttered guides (3 rows of tabs?! Go home LibGuide, you are drunk,) but I can't refer the librarians to any best practice guides outside of the LibGuides system. To this end, I started doing some research to look at best practices (based on assessment/usability testing) for creating subject guides. I'd love to turn this research into an article, but until I see what's already been written on the topic, I can't say if that will happen or not.

I did, however, create a Zotero user group (zotero.org/groups/libguides) for my research, so you can read up on the topic yourself, if you feel so inclined. I'll be adding to it on an ongoing basis, so you can join the group if you want to keep up with what I'm finding. I also opened up comments and discussion, so feel free to share your thoughts. Oh, and if you want me to add you as a contributor to the group, let me know. It might be cool to see what a bunch of us can find, if we all pitch in.