libguides in academic libraries

Libguides at St AndrewsVicki CormieSenior Academic Liaison LibrarianMarch 2011

Libguides

Why we decided to use Libguides

• New Academic Liaison unit at St Andrews• ‘Chalk and talk’ classes• Lack of hands on opportunities for students• Needed to provide resources for students • Solution had to be fast to create

Skip

Libguides

Many types of boxes are supported:• Rich text box• Links• Multimedia• User Input Boxes• Miscellaneous Boxes

Libguides

Links• will record outgoing stats on clicks• you can add in a proxy URL as a prefix• option to let users rate resources• can reuse links from other places in your

Libguides• can be updated with a global search and

exchange from main admin page

Libguides

Multimedia Boxes• RSS Feeds• Podcasts• Documents and Files• Delicious tag clouds

Libguides

Multimedia boxes can also be used for:• Embedded Media Widgets– Search boxes– Vendor provided search boxes– Catalogues– Books from the Library– Serial Solutions

Skip

Libguides

Other types of boxes supported• User input boxes• Radio boxes• Remote script boxes

Libguides

Other features include …..

Libguides

Mobile friendly…• The system auto-detects mobile devices and

serves the mobile version• You can also buy an add in to use it to create a

mobile library website

Libguides

Plenty of statistical material available:• Guides• Links• Produced on a yearly basis

Libguides

Can be used for a variety of different types of information guide not just traditional subject guides ….

Libguides

Masses of support both from Springshare and from the ‘Springshare Lounge’ community

Lots of guides are available to be reused and shared

Libguides

Relatively inexpensive (in my eyes)

•Prices are calculated by FTE

Libguides

So has it helped?Yes, not always in the ways you would think– Success with postgrads– Solving problems with FAQs– Giving us greater control of how we present our

resources to our students

However we could use it a lot more than we do – there are always going to be time constraints

Libguides

Any questions?

vhc1@st-andrews.ac.uk @viche on Twitter http://libguides.st-andrews.ac.uk