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:

• 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.