The end... or is it?

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.

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!

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:

• 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.

From:

• 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