Tear Down the Walls!Tear Down the Walls!LibGuides and

Evolving Learning SpacesKen RonkowitzKen Ronkowitz

November 2008

Overview

• Learning spaces continue to evolve as web tools further erase the physical walls of classrooms, libraries and other educational settings.

• This session examines the use of LibGuides, a web 2.0 content management and information sharing system designed specifically for libraries but being used at Passaic County Community College as a collaborative tool for courses.

• This hosted service offers opportunities to create and share reusable content, tagging, widgets, embedded video, RSS, and easy integration with other tools like Delicious and Facebook.

• “Library 2.0” – easy read/write and collaboration for librarians and faculty for resources and shared links

• The Community = 400+ libraries/schools worldwide, sharing ideas, content, and collaborating on creating guides.

http://www.springshare.com/libguides/

What Attracted PCCC to LibGuides pccc.libguides.com

• Hosted service (small school; small IT dept.)

• Shared edit access to pages/sites• Web page creation without needing to

know HTML (though you have access to the code if you have that knowledge)

• Easily embed videos, RSS feeds, podcasts…

At Passaic County Community College pccc.libguides.com

• Purchased as part of our Writing Initiative grant• To be used with each of 20 GenEd courses being

redesigned as “writing-intensive”– Collaborative design of guide with Initiative team,

faculty member and a reference librarian.

• Introduced at Summer 2008 Initiative Institute and immediately embraced by faculty – including those not participating in the first courses to be redesigned (or even part of the Initiative!)

Research Guides

Old model

• No author access to guides

• All changes through “webmaster”

• Timely updates less likely to occur

• Little or no collaboration

NEWNEW

Reusable content (learning objects) – pull or link boxes/guides from

your own guides,

other guides from your site

other school sites (with internal permission)

Connect with others in the LibGuides' social network -->

Collaboration beyond shared editorial control

LibGuides Social Networkhttp://springsharelounge.com/

TYPES OF CONTENT

Easy Rich Text (WYSIWYG) Editor

Images

• Users can upload images (gif, jpg, png) from their computer into the LibGuides boxes via the Rich Text Editor, and the images will be stored on LibGuides servers. – Initial storage limit is set to 2 GB per institution, i.e.

approx 10,000 images using the average image sizes, and with that limit increasing over time.

• Tag clouds

• RSS feeds

• Videos

• Widgets

• Polls

• Comments

• Chat

• Profiles

2.0

Widgets

• LibGuides widgets enable you to embed library content into any blog, website, social network, or a courseware system. The widgets are flash components that can be placed inside any web page. Patrons can also search your library catalog directly from any LibGuides widget.

Google Scholar Search

• This content box enables users to search the Google scholar database from LibGuides. – The librarian can also create a “default query” for users

of Google scholar. The query will appear when the visitor loads the box.

Book Links

• Provide links to your library catalog - or Amazon, Google books or any other site where the visitor can get more information about the book.

Dates & Event Calendar

• Dates and events content box enables you to create a list of events and order them chronologically. Each event can have a date, short description, URL, and additional information fields attached to it.

Dynamic Scripting

• Insert dynamic scripts for web forms, catalog search boxes, or online databases search boxes inside your guides.

Users Can Submit Comments, Add a Link…

• You can enable your visitors to submit their favorite links on a given topic or a subject.

Interactive Polls

• Interactive poll enables you to create a poll on your page. Create a question and enter up to 6 choices for your poll. Each poll choice can have an associated URL.

LibGuides In Facebook

• first library app available to Facebook’s 60 million users (now has 3 apps)

• users just select LibGuides from apps list– app will recognize the user's school affiliation and

present them with their "home" system.

• distribute library content across the web

• meet students where they are

• improve visibility of resources & services

Twitter Integration

• Now when you publish a new guide you can broadcast the news on Twitter for all your followers to see. Anybody subscribed to your updates will see the name of your newly-published guide and the URL to access it.

Users Can Share…your pages via popular social networking sites with just a click

Post To LibGuides

• Add a browser button so that you can very easily add content to your guides.

• Add "Post to LibGuides" Button to Your Browser

Administration

Stats

Track usage statistics for your Guides

System Summary

# Guides # Accounts Homepage Views Total Guide Views 70 45 7311 20799

Backup

• Guide owners can create local backups of their guides, in html format, on their computers.

• Springshare does daily backups of all databases – but a local backup can come in handy if you accidentally delete a box or a page on your guide - you can quickly rebuild it using data from your local backup.

Uniform Look for All Guides

• The admin can "lock" the color scheme for all guides in your system. It is recommended that you create a sample guide first, experiment with different colors, and inform your users of this change before setting this option.

Marketing

• Customizing & branding of site • Library promotion• Workshops

Additional presentation materials at:

http://pccc.libguides.com/users