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!

Is tenure academic?

I really wanted to make the switch to an academic library where the librarians had faculty status, because I'm on a career path that includes publishing and presenting, and I wanted some credit for that. I'm noticing a scary trend though. Because it was not required in my old job, my scholarly projects were organic. If I did something I felt was interesting enough to share, I wrote about it or presented on it. Now that I'm at a school where librarians are faculty members, I see some of them (and this seems to be encouraged) coming up with half-cocked projects that are not of any real use to the library or the school, just so they can write them up and get articles on their CV.

This is just taking librarians away from their regular (and, in my opinion, more important) job of being useful to their local communities. And, if not that much thought is going into their written content, they're not adding much to their professional community either.

When all that debate was happening over whether or not librarians should have faculty status, I was firmly on the side of YES, because I don't want all my scholarly work to be done on my own time, and for nothing. But if we're just going to adopt all the problems of a crumbling tenure system, I'm less sure of where I stand.

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.

Open Access is easier than you think

I recently attended a talk by Jill Cirasella, a librarian at Brooklyn College, on open access publishing (check out the slides here: http://www.slideshare.net/cirasella/cuny-oa-ir-york). I kind of went as a professional courtesy to my colleague who set up the talk, because I honestly thought I was pretty well-informed on the topic. Turns out I was sadly mistaken on that count. I figured the talk would be about seeking out and publishing in open access journals, but what I didn't realize was that there are actually two types of open access publishing: gold and green.

Gold open access journals are ones that make their articles freely available to the public, and sometimes (often?) require their authors to pay a publishing fee. This funding model puts payment for access to scholarship at the beginning of the publishing process, or the time of submission, not at the end, or time of access. This is also what most of us think about when people talk about open access publishing. 

But it turns out this talk was focused on green open access publishing, or traditional journals that allow their authors to self-archive some version of their work, and make it openly available on the web. Some restrictions can include an enforced embargo period, or only allowing authors to make available the pre-print (article before any editor or peer review comments) or post-print (final version of the article, but not in the format published by the journal.)

Jill gave us some tools to easily find out the copyright rules for specific journals, including the SHERPA/RoMEO website, which allows you to search for a journal title, and view a summary of authors' rights. Turns out, the publisher of the two journals I've written articles for, Taylor & Francis, have a very lenient open access policy for library science journals. They allow you to self-archive the post-print of your article, with no embargo period. (Oh how I wish I knew that earlier! My articles have been languishing behind paywalls all this time!)

Once you find out if you can self-archive your article, (it turns out that 94% of the journals covered in RoMEO allow some form of it. Wow!) you need to find a repository to deposit your article in. You can, of course, self-archive on your own site, but large repositories are far more stable and vastly increase find-ability. (You do want to be cited, don't you?!) If your institution has an institutional repository, that's the best place to start. If it doesn't (as my school does not) you can check out this list of discipline-specific digital repositories: http://oad.simmons.edu/oadwiki/Disciplinary_repositories.

It turns out there are 2 pretty prominent library science repositories, E-LIS and DLIST. I plan on submitting my papers to both, but have only gotten around to submitting to E-LIS so far. 

submitted!

and... accepted!

So now you can access the final, peer-reviewed, full-text of my articles here: http://bit.ly/Y1uQZd. I'll keep you all posted on whether my citations go noticeably up or not, now that they are out from behind a paywall.

A pro-tip for you, so you can learn from my fail: KEEP SEPARATE COPIES OF ALL VERSIONS OF YOUR PAPER. I cannot stress this enough. When the editors sent me the first round of comments, I opened up the Microsoft Word document and made the changes (without enabling the track changes function.) So when I was told I was free to make my pre-print publicly available, I didn't HAVE a pre-print to make available. 

THEN, because I'm an IDIOT, I had the opposite problem with the post-print. The final round of edits are usually made directly in the publisher's online system, and I didn't bother going back to my word document to mirror the changes I had made in the system. So when they told me I could make the post-print freely available (but not their version of it) I didn't HAVE a post-print to make available. ::headdesk:: For you fine people, I actually went through the final pdf version of the document, copied and pasted it page by page into a text file to remove formatting, and then transferred the whole thing, plus images, back into a Word document. This was monotonous and cumbersome and I DON'T recommend you do it.

So, make sure you have a copy of the article that you originally submit, BEFORE you receive any comments from the editors or peer-reviewers, and make sure you have your own copy of the final version, with all the edits, and make sure they're clearly labelled _preprint and _postprint. You'll thank me later.

PS- Thanks, Jill, for a really enlightening presentation!!! :)
PPS- You can find a list of all the links from the talk (including a link to the slides) here: http://bitly.com/bundles/scwlibrary/5

MOAR LINKZ

Well it's a snowy Friday, and I thought I'd take some time today to compile and post the links I've collected since my last link post. Cuz I'm nice like that. UR WELKUM. ☺

Library Stuff

From Wikipedia to our libraries | Everybody's Libraries
Wikipedia can be a big help in making online readers aware of their library’s offerings. How can libraries facilitate this?

Thank You, Librarian - a Tumblr of love notes to the people who inspire us

Cracking the Code: Librarians Acquiring Essential Coding Skills | The Digital Shift

Tech News + Protips

15 Tips + Tricks To Get More Out Of Google Drive | hongkiat.com

10 Tips for Conference Presentations That Rock | iLibrarian

New research sheds light on 13 ways to gain followers on Twitter | Big Think

5 Best Websites To Send Fax For Free | hongkiat.com

Download Project Gutenberg ebooks to your Dropbox | digital inspiration

Responsive Design Framework Foundation Goes Mobile-First, Switches From jQuery To Zepto | TechCrunch

Cool Job Postings

Director, Scholarly Communications and Copyright
VCU Libraries, Virginia Commonwealth University
Richmond, VA
http://www.library.vcu.edu/about/jobs/ScholarlyCommunications.html

Copyright and Digital Access Librarian
Washington University
St. Louis, MO
http://www.eduhacker.net/job-market/digital-library-jobs/copyright-digital-access-librarian-washington-university-st-louis.html

Instruction Librarian (classroom + web-based)
Western Oregon University
Monmouth, OR
http://www.wou.edu/admin/hr/faculty/2013-2014/F1303_Instruction_Librarian.pdf

Web Front End Developer, Archives
New York Public Library
New York, NY
http://publicboard.libgig.com/job/web-front-end-developer-archives-new-york-ny-new-york-public-library-f50db87ef3/?d=1&source=alert

Director/System Administrator
Montgomery County Library + Information Network Consortium
Conshohocken, PA 19428
http://www.mclinc.org/Employment/MCLINC_Dir_SysAdm_Vacancy.pdf

Supervisory Librarian
Executive Office Of The President
Washington, DC
https://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/338690400

EdTech

Online Education and Jazz | Marginal Revolution

Other Interesting Stuff

Why We May Never Beat Stigma | the fix
Using the word 'addiction' to apply to any bad behavior gives jerks a free pass, and hurts real addicts.

Dove sneaks revert-to-original Photoshop plugin into art directors' toolkits | BoingBoing
Dove tricks photoshoppers into facing the effect of manipulating the female image of beauty.

Screw The Postal Service. I Hope Your Cute Indie Clothes Chafe You All Summer Long | Reverb
Watch the fake Postal Service audition video first. Then read Duff McKagan's reply. Hysterical.

French Designer Pixel Glasses | Sprite Stitch

GEEKSOAP | ♥

I'm into Vine now. Vine is cool.

Crappy image maps messing with my mind

Please, for the life of Brian, give adequate thought to creating image maps (images that contain multiple links, mapped to different areas of the image.) While they can be useful, and even creative, they can also be confusing. (The one in the linked Wikipedia entry is a good example of a creatively-designed image map, that has some functional issues.)

In web design, you rely on certain conventions to indicate to the user what can be clicked on (ie-a link.) If you use an image as a link, users can see the image is click-able by mousing over it, and seeing if the pointer changes from an arrow to a hand. However, if you make an image into an image map, but divide the entire image into click-able sections, it can be hard to tell the different areas of the image link to different places. You can help alleviate this problem by restricting the click-able areas to distinct areas, separated by some non-click-able space, and also by using tool-tips or title tags to describe the link hidden in that part of the image.

My motivation for this post? My own damn library's website. Check out the header on this page: http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu. It took me a moment to realize that the entire header didn't link back to our website, but also contained a link to the school's website. After much clicking and confusion, I realized that the bottom part of that image not only contains a link to the *school's* website, but also the school *system.* Now, maybe you got that at first glance, but I honestly didn't, and I highly doubt I'm the only one to make that mistake. Part of the problem is that the site was created years ago, and as I mentioned in the Harvard Library website post, alt tags are no longer rendered as tool tips by all browsers (I'm using Chrome, and they don't show up when you hover over the links in it.)

I opened the page in Dreamweaver to be able to visualize where the links were mapped to (see below,) and I can honestly say that they tried to keep the links tight to the text, but I think that the bottom two links are just too close together for it to be quickly apparent to the user that they link to two separate places.

How would I have done it? I would have probably made the "CSI" part link to the school, and the rest would link to the library. I'd probably add the "City University of New York" as a regular text link, underneath the header image, or possibly just in the footer.

Just remember when creating image maps: unless the user hovers over various areas of the image to find the links/tool tips, there is no external indicator as to what part of the image links to what (ie-you can't tell just by looking at it.) You have to rely on visual cues and web design standards to cue the user in to the fact that the image contains a.) a link and/or b.) multiple links. They may not take the time to wave their cursor across the whole image to discover just how many links there are, and what they link to.*

*Some cues that there are multiple links are:

• Scrolling over the image and noticing that the entire image is not click-able. Many developers will not bother creating an image map to insert a single link in an image, unless they have a good reason to; they'll just make the entire image the link.
• Patterns... If it's a picture of the solar system, and the first two planets are links, the user will guess that the rest of the planets are too. Same thing with maps where more than one location is linked, or groups of people where more than one person is linked. (etc, etc...)
• Added visual cues such as numbers, letters, or symbols that indicate where the user might find a link. (Example: http://www.frankmanno.com/ideas/css-imagemap/#ex)

FORKED!

The list of library tech peeps was starting to get a bit unwieldy, so I forked it! Sheet 1 of the list is website and user experience types, while sheet 2 is digital projects/eResources/systems/repository types. I know there's some overlap, so when in doubt, I tried to think if I would classify that particular person as "front-end" or "back-end." And yes, I do giggle whenever I think of someone as a "back-end" person. I AM TEH MAHTYUR.

If you think I've mis-classified you, or if I have your link(s) wrong, just let me know, and I'll fix it ASAP, because I now have a Gdrive app on my phone so I can be fly on the fly. Waitwhat? Shuddup it's Monday and I've had 3 cups of coffee already.