We are thrilled to introduce a new chapter in the LibGuides (r)evolution – LibGuides community site, at http://community.libguides.com. You can also access this site by clicking on the “Community” tab on the LibGuides admin screen. The community site makes it possible to search guides of all our member institutions. Imagine the possibilities – a global community of thousands of cutting-edge librarians (2,500 as of March 2008), publishing useful content (4,800 guides and counting), sharing ideas, best practices, and collaborating on creating LibGuides.
Here’s an example: Say you are a business librarian/liaison at the Upstate Memorial Library. You can log on to the community site and search for all business-related content at all LibGuides member libraries. You can search the guide titles/descriptions, subjects, tags, and guide authors. The full text search for guides is coming soon as well!
It gets even better: now you have the ability share content within the LibGuides community. You can use *any* guide from any system as a template when creating your guides. LibGuides becomes a social network and a global community of librarian-created content. We’re psyched! And we hope you are, too!
Sharing LibGuides content across institutions
Here’s how to share content with other LibGuides librarians.
- Log on to the community site, at http://community.libguides.com.
- Check out Featured/Popular/Recent guides, or search for guides using keywords or by author.
- When you find the guide you want to use as a template for your own guide, contact the guide owner (their contact info is in the profile box on the right) and get their permission to use the guide as a template. It is very important you get the guide author’s permission first (you’ll see why, in step 6).
- When you log on to your institution’s LibGuides system to create your new guide, one of the options for the guide template will be “Use a guide from one of community institutions” (at the very bottom of the drop-down box for templates).
- When you select “Use a guide from one of community institutions” option, the pop-up will expand and ask you for the URL of a guide from another institution that you’d like to use as a template. Paste the URL of a guide you found in step 3.
- LibGuides will find this guide and copy its contents into your newly created guide. It will also send an email notification to the original guide owner telling them you used their guide as a template. Your email address, your institution, and the name of your new guide will be listed in this email sent to the original owner.
The ability for our member libraries to share ideas and best practices in creating content, and then to share that content and collaborate with each other is something we think will be extremely valuable to our clients. It adds a new dimension to LibGuides and makes it even more useful.
One final note – we have built triggers into the system (like email notifications to guide owners) when you use someone else’s guide as a template when creating yours. Please respect other people’s work and always check with the guide owners to make sure it is okay to use their guide as a template.
As always, thanks for your continued support, and welcome to the LibGuides social network! Facebook who?!? (just kiddin’, Facebook. Don’t get upset and delete our facebook apps from your directory. Please!)