[This is the text of the email I sent to all staff today regarding the LibGuides 2.0 migration status. I’m posting it here so folks can find it without rooting through their inboxes.]
We’ve had a few good weeks of drop-in help sessions for our LibGuides migration. The LibGuides committee has scheduled a few additional work sessions where folks can get together and work on updating their guides both in Allendale and Steelcase (check your calendar for invitations). As we get ready to go live with 2.0 next week, Here are a few reminders:
- You can access the new LibGuides site at http://libguides.gvsu.edu. Once we go live, the URL will be the same as our existing LibGuides (and links will all redirect to the new version of things). [UPDATED LINK TO LIVE SITE 8/20]
- A few months ago, Alicia created accounts for everyone. This is a different login than for the current LibGuides. Scroll down to the footer of the page and click “Log in to LibApps” to log in, or bookmark http://gvsu.libapps.com. If you haven’t logged in yet, rather than dig through your old email, just click “Forgot Password” and enter your email. They’ll send you a link where you can change your password and log in.
- I spoke with the CEO of Springshare today, since there was an issue that I felt needed o be fixed before we go live. He’s agreed to throw resources at the problem to resolve it by early next week. To give them a bit more wiggle room (and to help give some space to the work session next week), Beth (chair of the LibGuides committee) and I decided to postpone the go live date by one day. We will now go live next Wednesday, August 20th, rather than the 19th. [UPDATE: This bug was fixed on 8/15]
- There are some issues with LibGuides 2.0, although (aside from the one mentioned above) nothing that makes the site unusable. I’m working out the last few kinks in the template so that all of our editing functions work normally. I post frequently to our Library Status app, which you can access from any library page by going to Services > Library Labs > Library Systems’ Status. If you find a new problem, let me know through the big blue button on the status app. This alerts everyone on the team, not just me, so the response can be quicker.
- I post writeups about the current status of web projects at my work notes site. There is a bunch of stuff over the past few months about the LibGuides migration. There have been some complaints lately about this being a non-GVSU site, so I’ll take a moment to address that: The only way I can post updates like this on a GVSU site is by using Sharepoint. I posted updates every few days for over a year in Sharepoint, but subscribing to or reading things in Sharepoint is difficult. After talking with a lot of folks about what they wanted, I realized that I needed to build my own system to handle communications, since half of folks wanted to read updates online or in RSS, and the other half wanted emails. So, one weekend over a year ago, I built my own tool to handle the updates. It’s not a proper GVSU project, so I cannot host it on our servers. However, you can visit it once and click the Subscribe by email link and every update will be delivered to your inbox. (Alternatively, I can subscribe you. Just let me know.)
A few new things:
- Old LibGuides sites will be available for 3 months after we go live. If you have embedded widgets that your faculty use in Blackboard or elsewhere, they’ll want to update those widgets to the new links or with new embed codes. You can follow the updates on this on the status app.
- The LibGuides Committee and I will be offering LibGuides training sessions after we go live. These will be more structured walk-throughs on how to do many of the things you were used to doing in the old LibGuides.