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:

• Geomatics: http://unimelb.libguides.com/geomatics, and
• Software Engineering & Computer Science: http://unimelb.libguides.com/softeng_comsci.

I plan to finish the Biomedical Engineering guide that I have been working on in the next few days. When LibGuides are privately published, it means that they are only accessible if you know their URLs and they are not displayed, linked to or searchable on your institution's LibGuides homepage. So it is a great way to publish a draft of a guide when you need to send a link to others to get feedback.

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.

Additionally I have worked out a convenient way of proof-reading my guides. I create a backup using the 'Create Backup' option in LibGuides. This creates one long HTML file that contains all the guide content. I then open it up in MS Word and check the spelling and grammar for the whole guide at once. I plan to also place the backups of the guides on the server at work. If I do this regularly, as part of my maintenance plan, then I will have an archive of the guides and will be able to revert back to previous version of boxes or other parts of the guides if I need or want to.

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!