[Web4lib] LibGuides

[John Fereira]

Varnum, Ken wrote:
> LibGuides offers, as part of a supplementary package (at what we felt was a modest cost), a periodic export of your library's guides.  They give you the entire content of your guide (all tabs, all content), along with author metadata, in XML.  LibGuides updates the XML file weekly.  
>   
I'd heard about the XML export but, as far as I know, we've yet to 
purchase the supplementary package.  Out of curiosity how do you consume 
the XML file?  

> 1) Individual Research Guides (our name for the content hosted through LibGuides) appear in their own section of the search results when there are keyword matches.  For example, a site search for "history" -- http://www.lib.umich.edu/mlibrary/search/mirlyn%3Bwebsite%3Bejournals%3Bsearchtools%3Bdeepblue/history - pulls up 22 guides.
>   
On our main library site the  LibGuides domain name has been to the 
google site search index so the content is at least being indexed.  I'd 
rather work with the XML directly so that results can be themed 
depending on the website on which the content is being display.

> 2) In a topical browse, we make use of LibGuides' tags to assign individual guides to the subject category.   Users who go to our Economics browse page -- http://www.lib.umich.edu/browse/Economics - see a link to two Research Guides that have been appropriately tagged by the librarians who write them.
>   
The list of subjects on this page is produced from my Drupal LibGuides 
module.  In this case, it's looking for any guide that is tagged with 
the name of our unit library.

http://www.mannlib.cornell.edu/research-help/guides-subject

Here's the main library site Subject Guides page which is using the same 
module.  Note that if you select "Education" as a category, and hover on 
the links you see on the next page,  one is a link to a SpringShare 
LibGuide, another is a link to another Subject guide that was created 
long ago and hasn't been migrated to LibGuides, and it also includes a 
list of related course guides.

> Having the entirety of the guide's content and metadata at our disposal in XML has proven very useful.  Since we have the data, we can (though we don't currently) do such searches as John mentions.
>
> --
> Ken Varnum
> Web Systems Manager
> University Library                       E: varnum at umich.edu
> University of Michigan                   T: 734-615-3287
> 309 Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library      F: 734-647-6897
> Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1205                 http://www.lib.umich.edu/
>
>
>
>
>
> On 9/30/09 10:54 AM, "John Fereira" <jaf30 at cornell.edu> wrote:
>
> The API, IMHO, stretches the definition of API.  It's really a form that
> will produces a URL which can but cut-n-pasted onto another web page.
> It's not very flexible, and doesn't expose all of the features that are
> URL addressable (for example, with the right incantation you can get a
> block of html which represents the tag cloud).   You can't, for example,
> get a list of LibGuides which are in a named category *AND* have a
> specific tag.
>
> Still, it's worth looking at the API in terms of how you may want to
> manage LibGuides for your institution.  Creating a controlled vocabulary
> for Categories and Tags early on will allow you to make better use of
> the API.   For example, if you maintain Subject based LibGuides and
> Course based lib guides, tagging the course guides with something like
> "Course Guide" (and the course number) will make it easy to pull in just
> the Course Guides.  Establish a Category/Tagging policy early on and
> you'll save time later.
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