Subject Guides - alternatives

Wed Jul 3 09:22:39 EDT 2013

Hey everyone,

Just jumping in for a moment. I think the fears about siloing are a little overblown. Taking a previous commenter’s word about a SubjectsPlus API, I’d add that LibGuides—as of this Fall—and Wordpress have robust APIs that allow you to freely syndicate content. If a person is ambitious s/he could even use the Wordpress JSON API to take content from another source and post it to Wordpress.

Now I guess my take on a subjects management tool: we kind of homegrow everything, but something like this is only feasible if there’s a dedicated web team. We also have LibGuides. Honestly, LibGuides is IMHO ugly as sin, but this Fall there is a major free update that Bootstraps LG—making it responsive and painless to theme—as well as adds a [supposedly robust] API so all that LG content can be syndicated.

And I guess I’ll just add my general advice for any product a person pursues: if it doesn’t have an API, don’t consider it.

All the best!

Michael
A front-end librarian
// ns4lib.com

From: Web technologies in libraries [mailto:WEB4LIB at LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Andrew Darby
Sent: Wednesday, July 03, 2013 8:49 AM
To: WEB4LIB at LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [WEB4LIB] Subject Guides - alternatives

Not sure I understand.  SubjectsPlus (Library a la Carte, LibGuides) have a lot of (interrelated) moving parts.  "Just" building in WP would be a tremendous amount of work, and doesn't make much sense when something already exists to handle these functions.  If you mean, just build a given page (say your staff list) in WP by hand coding a bunch of HTML, then you are siloing the content within your own site, as it will be just stored as one large undifferentiated blob.

On Tue, Jul 2, 2013 at 9:40 PM, Nina Work <nina at atendesigngroup.com<mailto:nina at atendesigngroup.com>> wrote:
...but why bother with the separate interface at all? Is it a better back end experience for staff? No snark, just honestly wondering how that model works better than just building them in WP? :)

Sent from my iPad Mini

On Jul 2, 2013, at 10:16 AM, Andrew Darby <darby.lists at GMAIL.COM<mailto:darby.lists at GMAIL.COM>> wrote:
Well, SubjectsPlus does have an API (newish, and maybe not 100% fleshed-out), so the ease of integration depends somewhat on the other systems.  For instance, we do a nightly pull of data from our III ERM system to update our SP-powered database listing page [1], and before the API, because SubjectsPlus is PHP, it was trivial to pull SP data into our main WordPress website.

Andrew

[1] library.miami.edu/sp/subjects/databases.php<http://library.miami.edu/sp/subjects/databases.php>

On Tue, Jul 2, 2013 at 11:59 AM, Ross Singer <rossfsinger at gmail.com<mailto:rossfsinger at gmail.com>> wrote:

This is still a silo. The point is that the content isn't easily integratable into other systems, although you probably at least have access to it.

-Ross.
On Jul 2, 2013 11:17 AM, "Sigrid Kelsey" <sigridkelsey at gmail.com<mailto:sigridkelsey at gmail.com>> wrote:
 A few more words about SubjectsPlus- it is an open source program that installs right on your web server- so there isn't aren't silos.  It also has a staff directory and resources list too.  I've integrated the SubjectsPlus information into webpages across our site- it is pretty seamless.   For example, our staff directory (http://www.lib.lsu.edu/admin/faculty.php) pulls from the SubjestPlus database.  The guides are here: http://www.lib.lsu.edu/sp/subjects/
I wanted to keep some of our existing urls when I installed SubjectsPlus, and I managed to switch the staff directory and indexes and databases pages over with hardly anyone noticing a difference.

Sigrid

On Tue, Jul 2, 2013 at 10:14 AM, Teresa Coberly <teresa.coberly at colorado.edu<mailto:teresa.coberly at colorado.edu>> wrote:
We are just starting with the open source product Subjects Plus.  I’ve been very impressed so far.  Well written product with good support.

Teresa

---
Teresa Coberly
Technical Services/Library Technology Specialist
William A. Wise Law Library
University of Colorado Law School
Phone 303-492-4711<tel:303-492-4711>  : Fax 303-492-2707<tel:303-492-2707>
teresa.coberly at colorado.edu<mailto:teresa.coberly at colorado.edu>

library website: http://www.colorado.edu/law/lawlib/   ::  library catalog: http://lawpac.colorado.edu<http://lawpac.colorado.edu/>

From: Web technologies in libraries [mailto:WEB4LIB at LISTSERV.ND.EDU<mailto:WEB4LIB at LISTSERV.ND.EDU>] On Behalf Of Wardroper, Lawrence
Sent: Tuesday, July 02, 2013 8:20 AM

To: WEB4LIB at LISTSERV.ND.EDU<mailto:WEB4LIB at LISTSERV.ND.EDU>
Subject: Re: [WEB4LIB] Subject Guides - alternatives

I agree with you Nina – we have a DRAFT CMS built with our ILS Software. Not perfect at all but, definitely integrated with all our other resources and allows us to present content consistently to our staff and our users without having to worry about "interoperability" (did I spell that thing correctly??).

Always interested in other products to help me with additions to this in-house design of ours.

Lawrence Wardroper
Services de la bibliothèque | Library Services
Service administratif des tribunaux judiciaires | Courts Administration Service
90, rue Sparks, Ottawa ON  K1A 0H9
lawrence.wardroper at cas-satj.gc.ca<mailto:lawrence.wardroper at cas-satj.gc.ca>
Téléphone | Telephone 613-996-8735<tel:613-996-8735>
________________________________
From: Web technologies in libraries [mailto:WEB4LIB at LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Nina McHale
Sent: Monday, July 01, 2013 6:30 PM
To: WEB4LIB at LISTSERV.ND.EDU<mailto:WEB4LIB at LISTSERV.ND.EDU>
Subject: Re: [WEB4LIB] Subject Guides - alternatives

Hey, all,

While my preferred approach to this is an entire web site in a CMS with a guide as a content type--we have content in enough silos, and most CMSs are perfectly capable of displaying this type of information without additional tools or features--I know that's not possible for everyone.

That said, at my last academic library job, LibGuides was very easy to use and SpringShare provided excellent support.

Nina

Nina McHale
@ninermac
Aten Design Group

On Mon, Jul 1, 2013 at 4:20 PM, Terrell, Trey <Trey.Terrell at oregonstate.edu<mailto:Trey.Terrell at oregonstate.edu>> wrote:
We’re currently in the process of moving to LibGuides (and writing a migration tool from LALC -> LibGuides.) That being said, the folks at LibraryH3lp have taken up further development of Library a la Carte – it might be interesting to see what they come up with (http://libraryh3lp.blogspot.com/2013/06/library-la-carte-resurrected-open.html ).

Trey Terrell
Programmer Analyst
trey.terrell at oregonstate.edu<mailto:trey.terrell at oregonstate.edu>
Oregon State University Libraries
Corvallis, OR 97331

From: Web technologies in libraries [mailto:WEB4LIB at LISTSERV.ND.EDU<mailto:WEB4LIB at LISTSERV.ND.EDU>] On Behalf Of Tanja Webster
Sent: Monday, July 01, 2013 3:04 PM
To: WEB4LIB at LISTSERV.ND.EDU<mailto:WEB4LIB at LISTSERV.ND.EDU>
Subject: [WEB4LIB] Subject Guides - alternatives

Hi there,

We are currently using Library a la Carte and are looking for an alternative solution to create subject guides.

Any suggestions or recommendations are greatly appreciated.

Kind regards
Tanja

Tanja Webster | Digital Liaison Librarian
Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology | Te Mātāpuna o Te Mātauraka
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DDI 64 3 940 8228
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