Last week I found out about one of the coolest library technologies that’s come down the pike. It’s a Web 2.0 application designed for Library 2.0. It’s called LibGuides and it’s worth getting excited about.
It’s a system for providing information and resources to library patrons in an engaging and organized way, but without the information providers (mainly librarians) needing to learn code or some complicated system. (I’ll refer to the people creating content in LibGuides as librarians from here on in, although they can certainly be non-librarians.) Statistics are even kept automatically, so you can see how many times each link or file was actually clicked on. They count click-throughs, not page views, so your statistics are more accurate.
The coolest part is that LibGuides interfaces with Facebook, allowing your students/patrons to browse your Guides, search your library catalog, and link to various resources that you provide on your library website, all from within Facebook. Librarians who use Facebook can even add the Guides that they’ve created right into their Facebook profiles! 
Once you’ve created some Guides, you can make “widgets” that are basically little applet boxes that you can embed on websites, blogs, and even various social networking programs.
Another big part of the LibGuides program is the Community. Librarians can interact with others who are using the system, finding other librarians that specialize in the same subject areas and sharing ideas. You can even browse the Guides from other libraries!
For that matter, the LibGuides are publicly accessible unless they are intentionally made private. So you can use them for internal communications, training, etc., and also make resources that anyone in general can use. There’s even a list of libraries who are using LibGuides along with links to their LibGuides sites.
If you’d just like to see some great examples of Guides that have been created with LibGuides, visit http://www.springshare.com/libguides/examples.html.
NOTE: Butler’s LibGuides are also now available at http://libguides.butler.edu
If you’re interested in learning more about LibGuides, you can get lots of information on their website: http://www.springshare.com/libguides/. Of special interest is their “Introduction to LibGuides” video, for which the link is in the bottom right corner. If you’ve got a few minutes, I highly recommend viewing this.
The following is information from their website. Since it describes LibGuides much better and more succinctly than I can, I figured I’d use it. (The original page is here.)
Description
LibGuides is a “library 2.0″ online publishing system. It combines the best features of social networks, wikis, bookmarks and blogs, to help librarians share information and promote library resources to the community. LibGuides is fully integrated with Facebook, and LibGuides widgets enable the distribution of library content on social networks, blogs, and courseware systems. Patrons can also subscribe to the email updates of their favorite LibGuides content. Simply put, LibGuides connects you with patrons, wherever they are.
How Does It Work?
Every library gets their own customized LibGuides system. The librarians then aggregate and publish useful information by organizing it into Guides. These Guides can be subject guides, info portals, class guides, community guides, research tips… or any type of useful content (see examples). Documents, links, podcasts, rss feeds, videos, search boxes, polls, and any type of dynamic content can be put into Guides, for a true web 2.0 learning experience.
Connect With Patrons
LibGuides provides many options to connect with patrons and distribute information:
- Every librarian has a profile page listing their contact info & all their content.
- Patrons can chat with librarians from any Guide, on Meebo, Plugoo, AOL, Yahoo IM, Google Talk and MSN Messenger.
- Users can participate in polls, rate the resources using star-rating system, and leave comments.
- Everything published in LibGuides is instantly available in Facebook, thru LibGuides Facebook app.
- LibGuides Widgets display LibGuides content on any webpage, blog, or a social network.
- Users can subscribe to email updates whenever new content is published.
There you go. Check them out! Yes, they’re a subscription service, so you do have to pay an annual fee, but it’s surprisingly low–much less than some databases we subscribe to and which hardly get used, while THIS resource is practically guaranteed to see some heavy use.
