http://demo.libguides.com/content.php?pid=5211
You can what other colleges are doing with this here:
http://springshare.libguides.com/
Pros:
- allows easy integration of web 2.0 resources (RSS, widgets, IM, tag clouds, polls, etc.)
- can easily format content and divvy resources into tabs and create template for standardized look
- pages hosted by LibGuides
- easily share content/widgets between guides
- searchable
- allows user comments
- includes built in usage stats tool
- (I think) can brand top nav to mimic MyESC
- some cost (minimal tho)
- limited customization of some look and feel aspects (colors, fonts)
Thanks,
Dana
9 comments:
There is so much you can do and I think that and the tabs are great, however, I don't like the bland business-like look or colors. I'm torn but may be convinced based on the functionality. It just loses that librarians feel/touch by not being able to manipulate fonts, etc.
Ian
I'm not certain, but there may be a function to overlay a style sheet on the guides - if so, we could control those elements.
Yes, it looks like there are some customization options available at the admin level:
http://support.springshare.com/?p=50
another plus for this resource:
it can display what the most popular/accessed guides are (as well as the most popular tags) - that way students can use this info to find them as well.
Example: http://libguides.asu.edu/
Dana
Looks like they completely did away with tabs.
I think this tool has a lot of potential to incorporate our existing content and some of the new Web 2.0 features. It's good to see it can be customized (I did look at some of the other sites set up by other colleges.)
Dana, I'm not sure if you did this to illustrate the range of new features that we have access to, but I'm not sure the main page of you demo site emphasizes the right mix of information. I had the feeling I was being distracted by the bells and whistles, and failed to immediately pick up on the tabs that have the real valuable information.
That said, I think we should explore this further. I'd like to see some alternative layouts of content. Also, would we set up a aggregated page that showed all subject areas, or just link to each subject page from our site?
Nice work. I'm eager to show this to ET.
I set up the nursing one mainly to show of all the bells and whistles - certainly the layout can be improved.
As far as access, my suggestion would be to have an initial aggregate page that had links to all subject guides (it could also list those that are most popular, or those tags that are most popular within a tag cloud - similar to the example I provide in my previous comment). The main entry would be similar to our existing guides - first go to an aggregate page listing all subjects and let users choose the subject that fits their needs.
I'll get a price quote from them as a next step...
Where are we on this? I'd really like to see this incorporated or something like it. Is Facebook a free alternative or does the functionality of Facebook not meet what LibGuides is capable of? I know LibGuides and Facebook work collabortively.
I had thoughts of other uses, as well. We can use LibGuides or something like this as an alternate library home page. It would have the links we currently offer on our home page organized in a more visual manner, for example.
Another great feature is the ability for users to rate the sources we supply on a scale, giving the interactivity that we should be striving to achieve. They may even write in comments. I think using SCOPUS would make sense here (See discussion here).
We'd also be able to take polls if the user felt like it. Are there restrictions to the content of polls that we'd have to abide by?
Also, are we limited by ESC colors and other politics?
I meant to add that there are alternatives:
================
MyLibrary
SujectsPlus
LibData
ResearchGuide
LibCB
and even del.icio.us
================
and to sign off!
Ian
Post a Comment