LibGuides: A personal plug from a future librarian

I was initially introduced to LibGuides in 2009 shortly after the software had been adopted by SJSU librarians.  Although a librarian introduced the LIS subject guide in an email, I quickly forgot about it.  I didn’t think about LibGuides again until last semester when I introduced them to other students during library instruction and reference sessions as well as had the opportunity to co-create a guide myself during my student internship.  I quickly became a LibGuides fan, probably even more as a future librarian than a student.

When teaching library instruction sessions, I first used the guides as a starting point, a place to direct students when beginning their research (instead of the library’s website).  All of the students were upper level or graduate students in the health or biological sciences working on some kind of research paper.  Not having a science background, I found the LibGuides for these subjects to be fantastic teaching tools especially in the area of suggesting subject-specific databases to use.  I myself could follow a guide and walk students through the process thereby increasing awareness of the guides and teaching how to search effectively as well.

Another part of my internship required manning the main reference desk once a week.  I found that by consulting the appropriate subject-specific LibGuide (of which there are currently over 200), I could find a good starting place for research to share with students of any major that came to the desk seeking help.  

The most fun came though when I got to work on creating a new LibGuide with one of my supervisors.  I found the software very easy to work with; after a little reading, viewing a tutorial or two, and playing around with it, I was excited to add and change links and information until the guide became a finished product, ready to publish (since I have no programming or website creation background, I was relieved at the fairly low learning curve required).  The great thing is that because LibGuides are never really finished products, when it inevitably came time to make some changes, it was a snap to do so.  (At the time I didn’t add any RSS feeds because I didn’t actually know how to use RSS, but I’d love to try this out in the future.)  Academic content is dynamic and a tool such as LibGuides makes keeping on top of that content a much easier task.

The annual subscription fee for LibGuides ranges from $899 to $2,999 which can be prohibitive for some libraries.  But especially if an academic library can afford the software, I see it as a worthwhile expenditure and valuable aid for both students and librarians.