ENGLISH5 QUARTER4 MODULE1 WEEK1-3 How Visual and Multimedia Elements.pptx
UL LibGuides
1. UL’s experience of
creating & migrating
LibGuides
Anne McMahon
E-Resources & Web Services Librarian
Glucksman Library, University of Limerick
2. What we had before LibGuides …
• Old Subject portals
Varying in quality & coverage
Only three of four faculties covered
Difficult for faculty Librarians to update
• A separate ‘Faculty Librarians’ page
3. June 2014
Start of Project
• Employed a co-op (work experience) student full-time for 6 months
– Law Plus background allowed us to prioritise Arts, Humanities
and Social Sciences guides
– An interest in a career in librarianship
– The co-op student worked with the 5 faculty librarians on
developing content for LibGuides
• Digital & Technical Services did the back end work
– Customised system settings and look & feel
– Created an comprehensive A-Z database Guide
4. Agreed to a common front page for
subject guides…
7. Most significant achievement(s)
• We now have a guide for every one of our 27 academic
departments
• Co-op student worked with each Librarian to input their content
• Every faculty librarian and every faculty engaged in the process
• Our Librarian for Research Services & Bibliometrics created a very
comprehensive research guide which is one of our most popular
and heavily used Guide
• LibGuides has helped Faculty Librarians improve their online
presence
8. Ongoing
• Co-Op student created a manual for our librarians based on her
experiences (she’s now updating the manual for LibGuides 2)
• Working with the Info Services senior library assistant for 2 hours
per week to keep continuity and build up in-house expertise
• Other guides in development e.g. Collection Development Policies,
Academic Literacies, Information Literacy ….
9. Outreach to the university …
Head of Information Services gave a presentation
to the Library Information Resources Development
Committee (chaired by VP Research & including
faculty and student representatives)
very enthusiastic reception
agreed to help us with a launch and general
promotion
10. Migration to LibGuides 2
Reasons for Migrating
•Faculty Librarians wanted to do some more customisation on guides
•You lose some customisation when you migrate
– e.g. tab and box colour choices
– Custom Header & Footers
– Existing Banners
•Made more sense to do the changes in LibGuides 2
11. Migration to LibGuides 2
• Springshare give step by step guidelines
• They also provide a detailed online tutorial
18. Final Thoughts on Migration
• LibGuides 2 is easy to update
• Springshare provides very good online support
• Database Assets are a great help
• However default look & feel is limited in terms of customisation, if you do not
want to edit the CSS behind the guides
