Lessons From Lib Guides

LESSONS FROM LIBGUIDES Laura Harris @ Baker College, 11.24.09

Why LibGuides?
Online system created by the university was very limited – customization difficult
LibGuides’ 2.0 features seemed to offer more flexibility

How did GVSU do it?
We started our contract with LibGuides in late December 2007
Didn’t launch until Fall 2008
Lots of workshops & how-to documents

Our initial guidelines…
Minimize white space
Think about your users
Quality over quantity; many users don’t bother to scroll, so put the most important information “above the fold”
While these were good guidelines to begin with, they weren’t enough…

Challenges we faced
LibGuides is a little too awesome
Librarians want to use LibGuides for everything
Advice: define the scope of your guides carefully. Stick to subject guides and course guides, and think carefully before you use LibGuides for something else
Incomplete understanding of usability guidelines
Librarians may not understand the reasoning behind the guidelines
Advice…

A few tips on usability
Organize by task – “finding articles” rather than “indexes & databases” or “citing sources” rather than “RefWorks”
Be as brief as possible. Keep in mind that the attention span of the average web user is low.
Use graphics to show real content, not just to be decorative
Limit your font styles, colors, etc.

So, please don’t do this…

Or this…

One last challenge…
Browsability – Ranganath’s Fourth Rule – “Save the time of the User.”
We wanted to reduce the number of clicks our users had to make

So we did this, but it got a little unwieldy…

So this is what we’re trying next

Opportunities
Springshare is very responsive to customer feedback and suggestions
Creativity
Interactivity
Up-to-date information

Creativity

Interactivity

Up-to-date information

Opportunities for instruction
Interactivity – LibGuides provides a ‘feedback’ box type; you can embed many things into LibGuides
Go where the students are – using LibGuides’ API, you can embed LibGuides boxes directly into Blackboard
Assessment – guide statistics can show you which links students used the most

LibGuides in Blackboard

Guide statistics

Recommended reading…
Jakob Nielsen - usability expert
Any of his books
Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design:
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9605.html
113 Design Guidelines for Homepage Usability
http://www.useit.com/homepageusability/guidelines.html
Robin Williams - the designer, not the actor
The Non-Designer's Design Book
Bad Web Design Features
http://www.ratz.com/featuresbad.html
John Kupersmith – librarian
Library Terms That Users Understand
http://www.jkup.net/terms.html

More recommended reading…
LibGuides Style Guides from Boston College
http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=dg6z5m5m_93gg37x4dx
http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=dg6z5m5m_93gg37x4dx
http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dg6z5m5m_92dghmhdd7

Presentation & links available online at:
http://slideshare.net/rikhei
Questions?

Lessons From Lib Guides

by Laura Harris

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