Yesterday the LibGuides Advisory Committee (Gayle, Hazel, Kim, Beth, Betsy, Kristin, and me) met to talk about a few things, and I wanted to give you an update:
- We’ll officially migrate from our home-grown Database A-Z list to the new LibGuides A-Z list after this semester (likely on Monday, April 27). Earlier today I finished grouping all of the databases by subject to match the existing subject groupings, but if you’re a liaison, please check over your subjects to make sure the databases listed are the ones you want. If you’d like a change, please submit a problem report and Jeff or I will fix it for you.
- Moving all of these databases over showed us all some ways to improve database descriptions. The committee discussed making database description review part of the database renewal process, rather than breaking it out as a separate project. To make it easier to evaluate database descriptions, we formed a subcommittee to look into drafting some guidelines and best practices for writing database descriptions (Hazel, Beth, and Betsy). We’ll update you once they’ve got a draft.
- Assets are growing like mad. At last count (yesterday), we had well over 14,000 of them. That’s okay! We’ve decided that the only assets we are going to work to maintain and de-duplicate are databases. The rest are there to reuse if you like, or not, as to your preference. It’s not hurting anything to have more.
- This summer the committee will host a few “LibGuides Parties” (doesn’t that sound better than trainings?!?) These will have a short instructional component at the beginning, along with time built in to work on your guides, with help from members of the committee. I’ve even committed to bringing party hats, and maybe I’ll bake a cake? We’ve already thought of a few topics, but please let me know if there is something you’d like us to cover. So far topics include:
- Backing up your guides
- Using Database Assets
- Guide metadata
- Workflows
As always, please let me know if you have any other questions or concerns!