What do our users think of all of those LibGuides?

Following the lead of academic libraries nationwide, Duke Libraries jumped on the LibGuides bandwagon in July 2008.

In the last 3 or so semesters, 73 librarians, staff members and student workers have created and published 394 subject guides and course guides and in the first two months of this year, those guides have received nearly 34,500 hits -- not bad!

It's clear that patrons far and wide are using these guides, but we wanted to know more about their experience with them. Do they like long lists of databases and resources, or are short, targeted lists the way to go? Are they interested in commenting on resources they find particularly useful, or do they view that as a waste of time?

UNC-SILS field experience student Alice Whiteside and Emily Daly spent a couple of afternoons at the Duke's Bryan Center and polled 13 undergrads, 1 grad student and one staff member to get a sense of what users want from their LibGuides. We asked each user to select a guide from the LibGuides homepage and then asked the same 17 questions of each participant. We began noticing trends around user 10 and decided to end our study after 15 interviews.

Here are the highlights:

1. Users generally like the look and feel of LibGuides, and for the most part, guides met their expectations
   
2. Users prefer an uncluttered interface but perceive very sparse guides to be less useful than those with more text and boxes
   
3. Users do not consistently notice the tabs across the tops of LibGuides
   
4. Users prefer short, targeted lists of resources with short descriptions of each resource
5. Users believe that there is no need for a commenting function

And here are a some recommendations based on our findings:

1. Limit number of tabs to 4-6, and keep tab labels short (1-2 words)
   
2. Consider labeling the first tab of guide something other than “Home” (e.g. “Getting Started”)
   
3. Consider highlighting top five resources in a given area/format and then linking to or mentioning others, if necessary
   
4. Consider adding short descriptions to titles of resources, especially to those whose names are not clear (MLA, CIAO and PAIS mean nothing to many of our users!)
   
5. Disable comments feature
   

Interested in learning more? Contact Emily Daly for the full report, including the script we used for testing.

Citation and Conversation

A few months ago in our sister blog Library Hacks, Emily Daly highlighted the hazards faced by organizations like MLA and APA when updating citation styles. Faced with errors in the new edition which prompted a reprinting, the APA to their credit has launched a blog that explains some of the stickier points of citation. Recent posts there make an amazingly sensible suggestion that users can take “basic building blocks—namely, the generic elements that nearly all references in APA style contain” and use them to create citations for new kinds of information sources that might not be covered in a citation style manual.

What is so refreshing about this approach to citation is that it focuses our attention on why we cite. The building blocks of Who? What? When? Where? prompt us to think about how to represent the cited material in a way that allows others to understand our argument and easily locate the sources we used to construct it.

The post goes on to elaborate the citation elements: Who created this reference? When was this reference created? What is this reference called? Where does this reference come from (or, Where can my reader find this reference)?

In library instruction and writing courses, we often use Kenneth Burke’s metaphor of the unending conversation:

Imagine that you enter a parlor. You come late. When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too heated for them to pause and tell you exactly what it is about. In fact, the discussion had already begun long before any of them got there, so that no one present is qualified to retrace for you all the steps that had gone before. You listen for a while, until you decide that you have caught the tenor of the argument; then you put in your oar. Someone answers; you answer him; another comes to your defense; another aligns himself against you, to either the embarrassment or gratification of your opponent, depending upon the quality of your ally's assistance. However, the discussion is interminable. The hour grows late, you must depart. And you do depart, with the discussion still vigorously in progress.

Don’t we want to document our understanding of, and participation in, the conversation by creating sensible, effective, efficient citations? Wouldn’t that allow us to focus our energy on thinking and writing rather than the minutiae of form?

Inaugural Instructors Forum

Instruction & Outreach is always looking for ways to connect with the 30+ librarians who do instruction across the Perkins library system (Perkins/Bostock, Lilly, Music, RBMSCL and Divinity libraries). We’ve held monthly brown bag programs, annual instruction retreats, and special training events. Now there’s a new way for instruction librarians to come together. Instructors Forum, modeled on the Libraries’ successful Bibliographers Forum, meets bi-monthly in the same time slot as Bib Forum (so folks already have the time blocked out in their busy calendars). Instructors Forum is a venue for announcements, sharing best practices, and learning about new tools and techniques for library instruction.

We were fortunate at our first meeting to have Andrea Novicki talk about using Jing for library instruction tutorials. Andrea is the academic technology consultant for the sciences at our Center for Instructional Technology, and works with science faculty to incorporate technology into their teaching and research. Andrea has helped faculty use Jing for quick explanations of processes and concepts, and she walked us through how to create a five minute (or less) tutorial that could be used as a follow up to library instruction or a visual explanation that can be included in an IM reference interaction. We looked at tutorials that have been done by librarians at Idaho State and UNC-G, and Andrea shared tips for using Jing effectively. There was a lot of energy in the room as participants began to think about how they can use Jing instead of long text-based explanations of using tools and accessing services. A great first program!

We also gathered ideas for future Instructors Forum programs: a LibGuides refresher focusing on advanced and interactive features, instructional improvement/evaluating and documenting your teaching, and an end-of-semester sharing of experiences (good and bad) and best practices.