My information project has officially ended now! I added the finishing touches to the guides last weekend, including images and a Delicious tag cloud and then published all seven guides publicly on the University of Melbourne LibGuides website: http://unimelb.libguides.com.
It has been a very different experience taking this course at RMIT compared to all the others that I have completed toward the Graduate Diploma in Information Management. Usually I hand in an assignment, it is marked and then just filed away in a drawer somewhere. Whereas this project has been completed due to a real need in the workplace and hopefully will be well-used. It is a great feeling to know that all the work that I have put into creating the guides has not been wasted. The Science & Engineering librarian has already used the Civil & Environmental Engineering guide during a research consultation with a PhD student last Tuesday and I have used the Geomatics guide during a consultation with a new academic staff member.
Additionally, unlike other assignments, the project is not really completed just because the semester has ended. I have realised through completing the project that it will be important to continue to update the guides. I have written a maintenance plan with fortnightly, monthly and yearly tasks, such as using a link checker and reviewing the information needs of students in the Melbourne School of Engineering. I also have plans to market, improve and evaluate the guides.
The main lesson that I have learned through completing the project is that there is great value in approaching projects at work in a similar way to those completed at university. While it won't be possible for all projects in the work place, completing a literature review is a great way to learn from others in the industry, rather than reinventing the wheel. Additionally, writing up a report about the project, including a discussion about the outcomes of the project and recommendations, helped to focus my thoughts on the project and plan for the future. I plan to pass the report on to my manager and colleagues at work and hope that it will trigger a conversation on the issues surrounding library guides and lead to improvements in the guides being created at work. It was also fantastic to have a supervisor, who was outside of the workplace, to give me a fresh perspective and advice throughout the project. I am thinking of seeking out a mentor who could play a similar role for me in the future.
Finally, I would like to continue blogging on my professional experiences. I found that it was easy to feel lonely and isolated this semester as I was not attending lectures or tutorials. However, after attending ALIA Access 2010 I started Tweeting every so often about my professional experiences. This made me feel more connected to those in the profession and less isolated (especially when working in one person branch libraries on campus). It also helped me to feel motivated and excited about my project. My plan is to start a new blog, continue blogging about my professional experiences, and advertise my blog posts to my 'professional network' of friends on Facebook and Twitter.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Nearing the finish line...
It is week 11 of a 12 week semester at RMIT, so my project is rapidly drawing to a close. Since my last blog post I have been working hard to finesse the first four guides and complete the last three. I have now privately published two more LibGuides:
I have also had some helpful feedback from a couple of colleagues in the ERC library. One colleague who handles the engineering collection suggested that I add a link to a database in the Civil & Environmental Engineering guide: 'Transport', as it is quite expensive, but is currently under utilised. She also suggested I add links to a couple of other databases for Mechanical Engineering: ASM Materials Information, ESDU databases and to a website: eFunda (Engineering Fundamentals) that has general engineering reference information, such as constants, formulas and materials information. I made these changes yesterday.
I also sat down with the Maps Librarian and he reviewed my Geomatics LibGuide. I have added a 'Map & GIS data' page to this guide and we discussed what should be included on the page. We decided to add his profile box which contains contact information, and a link to the Maps collection website. He is also going to write some introductory information which I will include on the page.
Most importantly, my manager, who is the client for the project, has returned from annual leave and has reviewed my guides. She had a few small suggestions: to link to how-to videos for a database: 'SciFinder' on the Chemical & Biomedical Engineering LibGuides, but seemed pleased overall. To quote her email:
"I really like the approach you have taken with them and the logical progression across the tabs... I know these will be much used resources for students. Thanks again for preparing them."
I have also started working on a marketing plan. I was talking to another colleague who works in the ERC about what he thought about my guides and he mentioned that he had displayed one of the guides, that I had created previously, in the PowerPoint presentation that is displayed on the plasma screens in the ERC! So when I publish my new guides I will ask to have them featured as well. I have also sought permission from my manager to market my guides using QR codes. She has asked me to create some mock-ups of bookmarks or flyers featuring the QR codes and then we will meet to discuss it. I am thinking of using: http://goo.gl/ to generate short URLs for the guides, along with QR codes. I plan to follow the 3 rules of QR codes as set out on this website: http://2d-code.co.uk/three-rules-of-qr-codes/:
I have a few days of annual leave now and plan to finalise the guides, publish them publicly and finish writing up my report. It is all very exciting! One last thing: I am still using Twitter regularly to post little updates about my work on this project and I am still finding it a great way to keep motivated and connected with other people working on LibGuides at the ERC (it has sparked some lunch-room conversations) and at other libraries. So I plan to keep Tweeting!
- Geomatics: http://unimelb.libguides.com/geomatics, and
- Software Engineering & Computer Science: http://unimelb.libguides.com/softeng_comsci.
I have also had some helpful feedback from a couple of colleagues in the ERC library. One colleague who handles the engineering collection suggested that I add a link to a database in the Civil & Environmental Engineering guide: 'Transport', as it is quite expensive, but is currently under utilised. She also suggested I add links to a couple of other databases for Mechanical Engineering: ASM Materials Information, ESDU databases and to a website: eFunda (Engineering Fundamentals) that has general engineering reference information, such as constants, formulas and materials information. I made these changes yesterday.
I also sat down with the Maps Librarian and he reviewed my Geomatics LibGuide. I have added a 'Map & GIS data' page to this guide and we discussed what should be included on the page. We decided to add his profile box which contains contact information, and a link to the Maps collection website. He is also going to write some introductory information which I will include on the page.
Most importantly, my manager, who is the client for the project, has returned from annual leave and has reviewed my guides. She had a few small suggestions: to link to how-to videos for a database: 'SciFinder' on the Chemical & Biomedical Engineering LibGuides, but seemed pleased overall. To quote her email:
"I really like the approach you have taken with them and the logical progression across the tabs... I know these will be much used resources for students. Thanks again for preparing them."
I have also started working on a marketing plan. I was talking to another colleague who works in the ERC about what he thought about my guides and he mentioned that he had displayed one of the guides, that I had created previously, in the PowerPoint presentation that is displayed on the plasma screens in the ERC! So when I publish my new guides I will ask to have them featured as well. I have also sought permission from my manager to market my guides using QR codes. She has asked me to create some mock-ups of bookmarks or flyers featuring the QR codes and then we will meet to discuss it. I am thinking of using: http://goo.gl/ to generate short URLs for the guides, along with QR codes. I plan to follow the 3 rules of QR codes as set out on this website: http://2d-code.co.uk/three-rules-of-qr-codes/:
- Link to the mobile version of the page.
- Keep the URL short (then the resulting QR will be less error prone).
- Link to valuable content.
I have a few days of annual leave now and plan to finalise the guides, publish them publicly and finish writing up my report. It is all very exciting! One last thing: I am still using Twitter regularly to post little updates about my work on this project and I am still finding it a great way to keep motivated and connected with other people working on LibGuides at the ERC (it has sparked some lunch-room conversations) and at other libraries. So I plan to keep Tweeting!
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
First drafts of four guides
I am pretty excited, as I have finished the first drafts of four of the guides:
There are still a few changes that I'd like to make (like possibly adding some more images and maybe a del.icio.us tag cloud), but I thought it would be a good idea to get some feedback at this stage and make modifications over the next couple of weeks.
Some of the things that I have considered while making the guides include:
Next I need to start writing up my report, finish the modifications to the first four guides and hopefully complete the last three guides!
- Civil & Environmental Engineering,
- Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering,
- Electrical & Electronic Engineering, and
- Mechanical Engineering.
There are still a few changes that I'd like to make (like possibly adding some more images and maybe a del.icio.us tag cloud), but I thought it would be a good idea to get some feedback at this stage and make modifications over the next couple of weeks.
Some of the things that I have considered while making the guides include:
- Keeping the structure of guides consistent and the layout of the pages within the guides consistent:
- I have done this by using the same layout for all the guides, for example I have used the same tab or page names and I have used a two column layout on all the pages except the home pages.
- Placing important information prominently in the guides:
- I have included a list of a few key resources on the home page for each of the guides, so that if students do not read the rest of the guides they will still get some value out of it.
- I have put instructions on how to find each type of resource in the same place on each page: the top left-hand box.
- I have tried to order lists of resources by placing those most likely to be useful first (rather than ordering lists alphabetically).
- Reducing the amount of content:
- I have tried to keep the text to a minimum and have used simple language.
- I have tried to keep lists of resources short and break longer lists up into multiple boxes.
- I link to more detailed information in other guides, rather than trying to repeat everything in my guide.
- I have tried to minimise the amount of scrolling on each page.
Next I need to start writing up my report, finish the modifications to the first four guides and hopefully complete the last three guides!
Monday, September 20, 2010
Creating a Master Guide
Over the past week or so I have actually started creating the guides!
My main objective is to create the guides in such a way that they are easy to maintain (and relatively) quick to create.
I have started by working on a 'Master Engineering LibGuide' (http://unimelb.libguides.com/eng_master). I originally though that I would create a template guide that would determine the structure and main boxes to include in all the guides, and I started creating this template last semester. But I have since realised that a template might be a bit restrictive and so converted the template into a master guide, that has content that I will reuse parts of in many of the guides. For example, I started by creating a big list of links to engineering databases, and have started reusing individual links in other guides. This is really useful because I can change the link or description in the master guide and it changes in all the guides I have reused it in. The master guide is still a work in progress and I plan to add to it as I work on the individual guides.
I have also created a big list of links in the master guide to engineering LibGuides created by other universities that I found via Google and the LibGuides community website. I was surprised by how many there are, and I had to stop linking to all of the guides I found, as my lists were becoming too lengthy, but made sure that I linked to all the Australian engineering LibGuides I could find (as I think these are probably the most relevant). I plan to refer to these guides to see what they have included in their guides, the resources they have highlighted and the features they have included.
In addition to the master guide, I have created the following guides (which are in various stages of completion):
Today I have been concentrating on the Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering guide. I have found the chapters on Chemical Engineering in:
It has also been valuable working on this guide as I have found that I couldn't access a few online resources from home:
I am still not sure exactly what tabs (or pages) I will include in the guides, and plan first to figure out exactly which resources, such as databases or e-books, I will link to from each guide. I hope to finish much of this during this week... and will continue Tweeting about the experience!
My main objective is to create the guides in such a way that they are easy to maintain (and relatively) quick to create.
I have started by working on a 'Master Engineering LibGuide' (http://unimelb.libguides.com/eng_master). I originally though that I would create a template guide that would determine the structure and main boxes to include in all the guides, and I started creating this template last semester. But I have since realised that a template might be a bit restrictive and so converted the template into a master guide, that has content that I will reuse parts of in many of the guides. For example, I started by creating a big list of links to engineering databases, and have started reusing individual links in other guides. This is really useful because I can change the link or description in the master guide and it changes in all the guides I have reused it in. The master guide is still a work in progress and I plan to add to it as I work on the individual guides.
I have also created a big list of links in the master guide to engineering LibGuides created by other universities that I found via Google and the LibGuides community website. I was surprised by how many there are, and I had to stop linking to all of the guides I found, as my lists were becoming too lengthy, but made sure that I linked to all the Australian engineering LibGuides I could find (as I think these are probably the most relevant). I plan to refer to these guides to see what they have included in their guides, the resources they have highlighted and the features they have included.
In addition to the master guide, I have created the following guides (which are in various stages of completion):
- Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering,
- Civil & Environmental Engineering,
- Electrical & Electronic Engineering,
- Mechanical Engineering,
- Biomedical Engineering,
- Geomatics.
Today I have been concentrating on the Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering guide. I have found the chapters on Chemical Engineering in:
- ‘Information sources in engineering’ edited by Roderick A. MacLeod and Jim Corlett., http://cat.lib.unimelb.edu.au/record=b2946649~S30 and,
- 'Using the engineering literature / edited by Bonnie A. Osif' http://cat.lib.rmit.edu.au/vwebv/holdingsInfo?bibId=580271
It has also been valuable working on this guide as I have found that I couldn't access a few online resources from home:
- Ullmann's Encyclopedia of Industrial Chemistry (via Wiley online library), and,
- 'CRC handbook of chemistry and physics' http://cat.lib.unimelb.edu.au/record=b3127310~S30
I am still not sure exactly what tabs (or pages) I will include in the guides, and plan first to figure out exactly which resources, such as databases or e-books, I will link to from each guide. I hope to finish much of this during this week... and will continue Tweeting about the experience!
Saturday, September 11, 2010
Tweeting and compiling guidelines
I am back home in Melbourne after being in Brisbane last week for ALIA Access 2010 (see my photos on Flickr). I didn’t really hear anything about LibGuides (or subject guides in general) while I was at ALIA (possibly due to the streams that I attended: the New Grads stream and Library Camp), but I did learn a little about Twitter. People tweeted their questions and thoughts throughout the conference (using the hash tag #aliaaccess), and the organisers of library camp displayed Tweet Deck during the break-out discussions. I also had lunch with a few librarians who mentioned that they use Twitter as a personal learning network. So I plan to try tweeting about my experiences for the rest of the Information Project (as kjlindsay) in the hope that it will keep me motivated and that I might get some feedback and advice from other librarians! (I have also added my Twitter stream to the banner on the side of this blog).
I feel a little worried about having lost a week while I was in Brisbane, but have been working hard today and started writing up my literature review. I have taken my supervisor's advice and approached it by writing a series of questions as headings, and the one I was working on today was: ‘How should a subject guide be designed so that it is user-friendly?’. After sifting through my notes and combining the guidelines from several articles and websites some of the main points that I’ve gathered are:
I feel a little worried about having lost a week while I was in Brisbane, but have been working hard today and started writing up my literature review. I have taken my supervisor's advice and approached it by writing a series of questions as headings, and the one I was working on today was: ‘How should a subject guide be designed so that it is user-friendly?’. After sifting through my notes and combining the guidelines from several articles and websites some of the main points that I’ve gathered are:
- Less is more:
- Avoid overwhelming the user by minimising and breaking-up the content. Scrolling is bad. Bulleted lists, sub-headings, boxes and columns are good. Link to websites that have more comprehensive information if necessary.
- Be consistent:
- Consistency in structure and appearance, both within a guide and between guides from the same institution is important. Templates can help with this.
- Use images & icons:
- Photographs, screenshots, book covers, database logos and icons can break up the text, make the guide more appealing and help trigger students’ memories.
- Give important resources prime real-estate:
- Students often choose the most prominently placed resources, so don’t order resources alphabetically, order by importance or usefulness.
- Try not to use library jargon:
- Provide a glossary for common library/research terms.
- Interdisciplinary collaboration: A faculty learning community creates a comprehensive LibGuide
- Reaching Out with LibGuides: Establishing a Working Set of Best Practices
- Usability in the Library: LibGuides Reports, from the University of Michigan
- Research Guides (LibGuides) Usability Results, from MIT Libraries
- LibGuides: 9 Steps to Better Usability & Design at Boston College
- Making Research Guides More Useful and More Well Used
- 21st Century Readers' Aids: Past History and Future Directions
- From paper to electronic, the evolution of pathfinders: a review of the literature
- Cognitive Load Theory and library research guides
Monday, August 30, 2010
Drawing on the results of research
Last weekend I found some highly relevant articles and websites that report on the results of research into subject guides, created using LibGuides, that universities have completed. It was great to find these sources, as previously I had found lots of resources that outlined guidelines on creating subject guides, but the recommendations did not seem to be backed up by research.
One of the articles that I found was a pre-print: Little, J. J., Fallon, M., Dauenhauer, J., Balzano, B., & Halquist, D. (2010). Interdisciplinary collaboration: a faculty learning community creates a comprehensive LibGuide. Reference Services Review, 38(3). It describes a project at the College at Brockport where faculty members and librarians collaborated to create a LibGuide on research methods. The guides were then used during seminars and a survey was used to gather feedback from the students. The feedback was mainly positive but also included some suggestions for improving the guides. For example students indicated they would like more information on using databases.
Some of the other articles and websites that I found that report on research conducted by librarians include:
While it is out of the scope of my project to conduct usability testing or survey students, I hope that I will be able to draw on the results from these previous studies to create better subjects guides.
I am just about to begin writing up my literature review. I might add to it in the coming weeks, but I think that I have completed enough research at this stage to begin writing.
Tomorrow morning I am flying to Brisbane to attend ALIA Access 2010! It will be interesting to see if anyone mentions LibGuides or subject guides in general.
One of the articles that I found was a pre-print: Little, J. J., Fallon, M., Dauenhauer, J., Balzano, B., & Halquist, D. (2010). Interdisciplinary collaboration: a faculty learning community creates a comprehensive LibGuide. Reference Services Review, 38(3). It describes a project at the College at Brockport where faculty members and librarians collaborated to create a LibGuide on research methods. The guides were then used during seminars and a survey was used to gather feedback from the students. The feedback was mainly positive but also included some suggestions for improving the guides. For example students indicated they would like more information on using databases.
Some of the other articles and websites that I found that report on research conducted by librarians include:
- Foster, M., Wilson, H., Allensworth, N., & Sands, D. T. (2010). Marketing research guides: an online experiment with LibGuides. Journal of Library Administration, 50(5/6), 602-616
- Gonzalez, A. C., & Westbrock, T. (2010). Reaching out with LibGuides: establishing a working set of best practices. Journal of Library Administration, 50(5/6), 638-656.
- Usability in the Library: LibGuides Reports, from the University of Michigan: http://www.lib.umich.edu/node/22138
- Research Guides (LibGuides) Usability Results, from MIT Libraries http://libstaff.mit.edu/usability/2008/research-guides.html
While it is out of the scope of my project to conduct usability testing or survey students, I hope that I will be able to draw on the results from these previous studies to create better subjects guides.
I am just about to begin writing up my literature review. I might add to it in the coming weeks, but I think that I have completed enough research at this stage to begin writing.
Tomorrow morning I am flying to Brisbane to attend ALIA Access 2010! It will be interesting to see if anyone mentions LibGuides or subject guides in general.
Friday, August 20, 2010
Maintaining subject guides
I am still doing research for my project and have been searching for articles and books, reading, doing copious amounts of highlighting and taking notes. I found another fantastic book on engineering resources yesterday: 'Using the engineering literature / edited by Bonnie A. Osif' http://cat.lib.rmit.edu.au/vwebv/holdingsInfo?bibId=580271 which was published in 2006, and have been taking notes from that today.
During the week I read an article while on the train: Tchangalova, N., & Feigley, A. (2008). Subject Guides: Putting a New Spin on an Old Concept. Electronic Journal of Academic and Special Librarianship, 9(3), http://southernlibrarianship.icaap.org/content/v09n03/tchangalova_n01.html. In one section it explains how some libraries have used databases to construct subject guides. The database holds information on specific resources, and then web pages can be created dynamically based on parameters that the user selects. This presents a way to create guides that are customised to users' specific needs. Another approach mentioned uses Server Side Includes to combine multiple HTML or text files, that contain information on individual resources, into a single library subject guide Web page.
While I will not be able to use these exact techniques in LibGuides, these approaches got me thinking about the importance of creating guides that are easy to maintain and keep up-to-date. The database or Server Side Include approaches allow the guide editor to have a single place where they edit the information on a particular resource, i.e. either in the database or in a text or HTML file that can then be used in multiple guides. So far when I have been creating guides I have just been writing (or hard-coding) all the text and links into LibGuides boxes. But this means that if one of the links or the text has an error or becomes out of date I will have to fix the problem in multiple places.
After doing a bit of investigating, I think there are a couple of LibGuides features that can help with this problem. When you use a 'Links & Lists' or 'Web Links' box to create a list of links, you can choose to reuse an existing link from another LibGuide. This means that you can create and edit the links in a single guide and then use them in lots of other guides. See this LibGuides FAQ page: http://libguidesfaq.com/a.php?qid=2476 and help page: http://help.springshare.com/content.php?pid=101296&sid=761160 for more information. A similar feature allows you to copy boxes from other LibGuides and choose a 'link' option, so that any changes made to the original box are reflected in the copies: http://libguidesfaq.com/a.php?qid=2651. I now plan to create a master or template engineering guide containing all the links and boxes that contain content that I want to use across multiple engineering LibGuides, so that I can edit the content in a single place.
I also noticed when reading this article: Yang, S. Q. (2009). Subject guide 2.0: a dream or reality? Journal of Library and Information Science, 35(1), pp. 90-98. Retrieved from http://140.122.104.2/ojs/index.php/jlis/article/view/528/522 that it mentioned that LibGuides had a link checking feature (see: http://support.springshare.com/2008/09/25/link-checker-function-in-libguides/)! I had not noticed this before, but am very excited by it as I hate finding dead links on websites. You can click a link in your 'My Admin' area and it will show you a report of the broken links for your guides or for all the guides created at your institution. The report is updated every two weeks. One drawback is that it only checks the links in certain types of boxes: Web Links, Links & Lists, Dates & Events, RSS Feeds, Podcasts, Books, User Submits, and Polls. Therefore I think it will be important to use these types of boxes whenever possible when I create links.
I have been using LibGuides since last year and thought I knew a lot about them, but these discoveries have made me realise that I need to carefully check the LibGuides documentation, FAQ and help websites so that I don't miss out on some of the powerful features available.
In other news my supervisor approved by 'Project Design & Charter' document yesterday!
During the week I read an article while on the train: Tchangalova, N., & Feigley, A. (2008). Subject Guides: Putting a New Spin on an Old Concept. Electronic Journal of Academic and Special Librarianship, 9(3), http://southernlibrarianship.icaap.org/content/v09n03/tchangalova_n01.html. In one section it explains how some libraries have used databases to construct subject guides. The database holds information on specific resources, and then web pages can be created dynamically based on parameters that the user selects. This presents a way to create guides that are customised to users' specific needs. Another approach mentioned uses Server Side Includes to combine multiple HTML or text files, that contain information on individual resources, into a single library subject guide Web page.
While I will not be able to use these exact techniques in LibGuides, these approaches got me thinking about the importance of creating guides that are easy to maintain and keep up-to-date. The database or Server Side Include approaches allow the guide editor to have a single place where they edit the information on a particular resource, i.e. either in the database or in a text or HTML file that can then be used in multiple guides. So far when I have been creating guides I have just been writing (or hard-coding) all the text and links into LibGuides boxes. But this means that if one of the links or the text has an error or becomes out of date I will have to fix the problem in multiple places.
After doing a bit of investigating, I think there are a couple of LibGuides features that can help with this problem. When you use a 'Links & Lists' or 'Web Links' box to create a list of links, you can choose to reuse an existing link from another LibGuide. This means that you can create and edit the links in a single guide and then use them in lots of other guides. See this LibGuides FAQ page: http://libguidesfaq.com/a.php?qid=2476 and help page: http://help.springshare.com/content.php?pid=101296&sid=761160 for more information. A similar feature allows you to copy boxes from other LibGuides and choose a 'link' option, so that any changes made to the original box are reflected in the copies: http://libguidesfaq.com/a.php?qid=2651. I now plan to create a master or template engineering guide containing all the links and boxes that contain content that I want to use across multiple engineering LibGuides, so that I can edit the content in a single place.
I also noticed when reading this article: Yang, S. Q. (2009). Subject guide 2.0: a dream or reality? Journal of Library and Information Science, 35(1), pp. 90-98. Retrieved from http://140.122.104.2/ojs/index.php/jlis/article/view/528/522 that it mentioned that LibGuides had a link checking feature (see: http://support.springshare.com/2008/09/25/link-checker-function-in-libguides/)! I had not noticed this before, but am very excited by it as I hate finding dead links on websites. You can click a link in your 'My Admin' area and it will show you a report of the broken links for your guides or for all the guides created at your institution. The report is updated every two weeks. One drawback is that it only checks the links in certain types of boxes: Web Links, Links & Lists, Dates & Events, RSS Feeds, Podcasts, Books, User Submits, and Polls. Therefore I think it will be important to use these types of boxes whenever possible when I create links.
I have been using LibGuides since last year and thought I knew a lot about them, but these discoveries have made me realise that I need to carefully check the LibGuides documentation, FAQ and help websites so that I don't miss out on some of the powerful features available.
In other news my supervisor approved by 'Project Design & Charter' document yesterday!
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