Libguides and UX

[Coral Sheldon-Hess]

Hi, Laura!

I don't know if this is going to be super helpful to you, but because I've
kind of accepted the inevitability of LibGuide creation (I haven't let any
of the non-Systems librarians into my main CMS, so I either accept being
the bottleneck or I let them make guides), my focus has been on getting
people to follow guidelines/rules--which we call "best practices" for
palatability. There was a multi-year sales job in there, that I'm kind of
glossing over, right now, but setting these rules BEFORE you start should
be easier than having to go back and fix things afterward. I think. (I can
point you at some usability studies, if you need to make a case.)

For now, all we've standardized are the guides for academic
subjects/disciplines (which we call "Topic Guides" - don't get me started),
not guides for courses or guides for "how to do citations," etc.; those
sets of best practices are on hold until after we convert to LibGuides 2.
Not everyone is following the guidelines we've created, yet, but enough
people are that the peer pressure on the others is growing. Also, one of
our Web Team members is gung-ho enough to go out and get permission and
convert people's guides FOR them, if they don't want to do the work
themselves. :)

Here's the template guide I created, based on the findings of the usability
studies I read: http://libguides.consortiumlibrary.org/topic-guides-template

And here's the written Best Practices document (which is already out of
date and in need of updates):
https://www.consortiumlibrary.org/360/sites/default/files/topicguidesbestpractices.pdf

Note that this is all for LibGuides v1, and parts of it will have to change
drastically for v2.

-- 
Coral Sheldon-Hess
http://sheldon-hess.org/coral
@web_kunoichi


On Mon, May 5, 2014 at 1:38 PM, Wiegand, Laura K. <Wiegandl at uncw.edu> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
>
>
> I am interested in opinions on Libguides from UX, web and system
> librarians. We are a medium academic library that several years implemented
> Drupal as our CMS and created custom subject guides (
> http://library.uncw.edu/guides) that re-used data from other parts of our
> site, could be integrated with other parts of our site, that I thought were
> more usable and looked neater (as in clean) than Libguides.  Fast forward 5
> years later and we’ve hired some librarians who come from Libguide schools
> who really want them. I can’t deny that the Drupal guides need a facelift
> both on the front end, but more importantly on the editing side, and doing
> so can be bumped to the top of my to-do list because we need to migrate to
> Drupal 7 anyway.
>
>
>
> My question is, should I give in to the dominance of Libguides? My
> resistance is based on these principles:
>
>
>
> ·         Students don’t notice the tabbed navigation and subpages
>
> ·         Students find the inconsistency of libguides confusing, i.e.,
> some librarians put best bet databases in one box, some put them in a
> different place.
>
> ·         Students want efficiency, and so prefer simple (but not boring)
> layout
>
> ·         Students are pushed to yet another different looking library
> interface
>
> ·         Libguides is just another silo of data (i.e., another
> eResources A-Z, another list of librarians, not integrated with the main
> website)
>
> ·         Librarians can create new guides extremely easily, so there
> tends to be a crazy proliferation of one-off guides.
>
> ·         It’s librarians, not students, that really love libguides.
>
> ·         We would be paying for a service that we can support in house
> via a CMS
>
>
>
>
>
> I understand that Libguides are great for libraries that don’t have their
> own CMS, or strong IT support.  I also understand that there are template
> adjustments that can be made and style guides that can be written.
>
>
>
> Am I right, wrong? Are they really that awesome, or do they come with
> their own set of UX and data problems that would be better served by an
> in-house CMS?
>
>
>
> Thanks in advance for your thoughts, Laura
>
>
>
> ____________________________________________________________________
>
> Laura K. Wiegand
>
> Coordinator of Discovery Services
>
> William M. Randall Library <http://library.uncw.edu/>
>
> University of North Carolina Wilmington
>
> 601 South College Road
>
> Wilmington, NC 28403-5616
>
>
>
> wiegandl at uncw.edu
>
> Phone: (910) 962-3680
>
>
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>
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>
> 2014-05-05
>

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2014-05-08
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