Let’s talk about library guides
Photo credit: Linda A. Cicero / Stanford News Service
Guides are instructional webpages designed to educate users on specific topics or tasks. They play a crucial role at Stanford Libraries, connecting patrons to curated resources and step-by-step instructions. In 2020, frustration reached a tipping point among Stanford librarians. They were dissatisfied with the limitations and cumbersome nature of the guide authoring tool.
The demand for change was loud and clear: adopt Springshare LibGuides CMS—a more intuitive and versatile platform for guides. Prompted by this demand, library leadership tasked me with exploring the feasibility of adopting LibGuides. Should we make the switch?
Yes. Yes, we should.
Off I embarked on a thorough evaluation process, engaging with leadership, content creators, and developers to understand pain points with our guide authoring and hosting tool, Drupal. The main sticking point? Our Drupal environment was restrictive, only really allowing librarians to create link lists. Additionally, librarians found the backend so cumbersome that some outright refused to create guides.
With this knowledge, I compared two options - 1) adopt LibGuides or 2) develop our Drupal environment. LibGuides quickly emerged as the favored solution for several compelling reasons:
Familiarity: Most of our librarians had worked with LibGuides before. It is widely used among libraries and library schools worldwide.
Support: It’s robust global support network promised to ease the burden on our overworked web team.
Ease of Use: It promised to enhance the authoring experience without taxing our developers.
Industry Standard: Virtually all our peer institutions were leveraging LibGuides. While originality is valued, practicality and efficiency took precedence here.
The rising unrest among librarians may have helped, but I like to think my meticulous, systematic evaluation sealed the deal. Should we make the switch? Yes. Leadership agreed wholeheartedly!
There’s more to it though.
During my evaluation, I also uncovered another issue. The authoring tool was not cutting it, but there was also a lack of shared standards for guides among our librarians. There were no established practices around how to create a useful library guide. Recognizing this gap, I committed to developing comprehensive best practices to ensure our guides were not only easier for librarians to create but also more usable and accessible for library patrons.
To establish best practices, I delved into the strategies of other institutions and emerged with "Modern Pathfinders" by Jason Puckett—an insightful exploration into how people learn, how people navigate the web, and how people navigate the web to learn. Pretty important insights to have when creating instructional web content, don’t you think? Turns out link lists aren’t that educational. I heavily relied on “Modern Pathfinders” when creating best practices for guides at Stanford Libraries.
Impact 🙌
Armed with best practices, I planned and executed the transition from Drupal to LibGuides. I offered training and support to guide the transition and managed integration with our other Drupal web properties.
With LibGuides AND best practices in place, our content creators now wield a more intuitive toolkit to craft more engaging and informative guides. This empowerment has allowed them to deliver richer content tailored to the diverse needs of our library users.
By listening attentively to our stakeholders and embracing a proven solution, I not only improved the guide creation process but also elevated the overall user experience at Stanford Libraries. Link lists? I think not.
