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IOE LibGuides

The IOE or the Institute of Education, University of London's information portal', which has been created using Springshare's Campus Guides, is called IOE LibGuides. This portal will be launched in September 2012 when the first cohort of new students register for the undergraduate and postgraduate courses. IOE LibGuidesguides students to the Newsam Library and Archvies', collections, services and facilities. The site also provides instructions to students and researchers on 'How to ...' perform certain tasks that are useful for research in Education.

Why Springshare?

The software, LibGuides (the generic term used for both LibGuides and Campus Guides ) has been created by a US-based company called ‘Springshare’ and is being used by thousands of academic, public and school libraries worldwide – this includes some of the Ivy League universities such as Harvard and Stanford in the U.S. and Oxford and Cambridge amongst others in the U.K. At last count there were 3,400 libraries and over 51,000 librarians in 35 countries worldwide using the software and contributing and sharing information via the ‘Springshare Community’. Database publishers are also now starting to use the software – see for instance, how ProQuest have created a guide for a key education databases, BEI (British Education Index) at http://proquest.libguides.com/Springshare's 'Campus Guides' software was purchased in January 2012 to ensure that parity of service was provided to IOE students who are part-time and/or based abroad. Many articles have been written about the use of LibGuides in libraries - see, for example, a review of LibGuides by Ellie Bushhousen, Jennifer J. Little's article on the use of LibGuides in an academic institution

The benefits of using Springshare’s LibGuides software are many: the creation and promotion of library guides highlighting resources is much easier than on many standard content management systems; information can also be updated instantly; the software comes search-engine optimised so that LibGuides appear at the top of the list of results on Google and this in turn, will help promote our collections more widely; we are also now part of a community of information professionals sharing best practice and information with experts around the globe; and we will be able to embed existing and emerging technologies, including social media on our guides.

A 'Soft' Launch

Work on the site began in earnest at the start of 2012 when the proposal for a prototype to be presented at the IOE Annual Learning and Teaching Conference at the end of March 2012 was accepted. The theme of the conference was ‘Improving the Student Experience’ and it seemed appropriate to demonstrate the benefits of using LibGuides to both promote and inform users as well as provide the online enquiry service. The latter alone would allow for a parity of service to both part-time students in the UK and our international students who are not able to come to the IOE in person, immediately improving their experience of using the Newsam Library & Archives.

The fact that LibGuides embeds new technologies and social media will encourage users to interact with us in whatever medium they find comfortable. LibGuides also allows for information to be displayed on mobile devices, i.e. portable devices such as smart phones (a phone with access to the Internet) and tablets e.g. iPads. In addition, the information on LibGuides can be presented in an attractive way allowing Library & Archives to promote the various collections and aggregate information from different collections held at the IOE and from external sites. And finally, the potential of the software to embed new technologies such as digital video, images, bookmarks, and RSS feeds provides the opportunity to develop user information and digital literacies. This is particularly appropriate at this time given that the Newsam Library is working with the Academic Writing Centre at the IOE on the ‘Digital Literacies as a PG Attribute’ project funded by JISC (see "Digital Literacies as a Postgraduate Attribute" for further information).

The conference presentation focussed on the potential benefits of using LibGuides. In particular, the presentation focussed on:

Interactivity

With IOE LibGuides, users can comment on the information, rate resources, suggest links, give feedback via polls and mini surveys, contact us via SMS, Twitter, Skype and Facebook and use the online bookings and appointments system to book a group study room or an appointment with a member of staff.

Digital Literacy

The presentation then focussed on how the digital literacies of students can be improved by introducing them to the use of Web 2.0 technologies which are embedded in the guides via RSS feeds, podcasts, videos, tag clouds, web-links, links to resources in the Library – see, for example, the Research Skills guide, which brings all the blog posts relevant to researchers on the welcome page, and the Readings page for the CDR (Conceptualising and Designing Research) module, which highlights the resources (readings, new books, video, web links etc) for the lecture by Paul Standish on the philosophical perspectives of education.

Students can also develop new digital literacy skills such as learning how to keep current with research, see for example, the guide RSS: Keeping current with your research, learn about the different bibliographic management tools, EndNote, Mendeley and Zotero (the latter two LibGuides also highlight the opportunities to network with researchers world-wide using the inbuilt social networking technologies) and peruse the AV Resources Online guide which provides students with the opportunity to view some of the resources that are freely available on the Internet to develop their teaching materials.

Information Literacy

Students can now access quality resources recommended by librarians which are more appropriate for academic use than those that are found via search engines such as Google and sites such as Wikipedia and YouTube. This, it is hoped, will improve the information literacy of our students. Examples of the guides that point students to quality resources are the Databases A-Z guide which provides easy access to all the bibliographic indexes available to students at the IOE and via Senate House Libraries; collection guides including those highlighting our archive collections, School Architecture and Design and LGBT resources which provide an insight into the historical collections at the Newsam Library, and the guide on International Education which aggregates all the collections relevant to this area of research. There is clearly more work to be done in collating information resources under general headings such as, for instance, the History of Education, the Philosophy of Education, Educational Technologies etc. These are considerations that are under discussion and will be developed over time.

Improving the Student Experience

A demonstration of LibAnswers showed how students, whether full-time or part-time, whether based in the UK or abroad, can obtain detailed responses to their questions, and to interact with expert staff online using the online portal, SMS or social networking tools such as Twitter, Facebook, Chat and Skype. Students will also be able to browse frequently asked questions and find answers for questions that have already been asked by other students.

The fact that the library would be able to inform students immediately of new resources, service issues etc. was something that we also highlighted – this is not possible using the current content management system. Furthermore, the inclusiveness with respect to bringing together expertise, whether it is library and archives based or within the faculties was something that we also highlighted as a possibility. The reception of the site at the L&T Conference was positive and this ‘soft launch’ allowed the Library to both pre-publicise the site to IOE teaching staff and to gather feedback before embarking on developing the site further.

Focus Group

The site was further tested with a group of MPhil/PhD students in May 2012 whilst at an intensive, week-long ‘Information and Literature Searching’ course. Students were introduced to the portal early on in the course and the various guides were used to scaffold their learning as they developed their information and searching skills. The students provided useful feedback at the end of the course and most students found the site helpful and were generally positive. As the guides were integrated into the course content (in both the presentations and on the ‘worksheet’ for suggested hands-on exercises), students became familiar with the site during the course of the week. In addition to the guides, the students were also asked to interrogate LibAnswers, and to submit a query on this new online enquiry platform. As the guides became integral to the learning, some students provided additional feedback on the course evaluation forms. The feedback has been positive and helpful as some students suggested ways in which we could improve the homepage. A summary of the feedback is available on the Library’s blog. One student provided the following comment in her feedback:

” The whole library service is wonderful and always relevant and practical and the staff have both technical expertise and good inter-personal skills, not to mention the ability to look ahead and implement new developments in the most helpful ways. Thanks”

Working Group

Since June 2012, a Working Group made up of staff representing the different sections of the Library (Collection Development Services, User Services, Technical Services and Archives) have worked to fine-tune the site and create additional guides to highlight various collections, including the Archive and Special Collections.

Official Launch

The site will be launched in September when the new cohort of students register at the IOE. Existing students will be introduced to the guides at the Enquiry and Issue Desks and when they attend their information literacy training sessions. In addition to the main site, IOE LibGuides and LibAnswers are also available as mobile sites. These are currently under development. It is hoped that by using this new software, the Newsam Library & Archive collections to become more widely known and will inform researchers worldwide of the collections and services available at the IOE.