April 30th marked the 15th anniversary of the first LibGuides install! That's right, if LibGuides were a person, it would be eligible for a learner's permit in many states. While we won't be pursuing that particular right of passage, we thought it would be fun to take a stroll through the Springy archives and look at how much Springshare has grown since that fateful day back in 2007.
A Look Back...
On our 10th anniversary, we caught up with Steve Bell from Temple University to reminisce about the early days of Springshare and LibGuides. Temple was the first-ever LibGuides install, and they still use the tool today!
"Librarians were eager to move paper research guides and pathfinders to the web, but were frustrated by internal rules and requirements that made it difficult to do so. Then on April 16, 2007 I received this message from Slaven..." And the rest is history!
The library industry was not alone in this desire for new technology; 2007 was an important year for tech in general. A CNET article from earlier this year outlined the tech innovations of '07, including the beginning of Netflix streaming, the very first iPhone, the Kindle, the first LCD TV, and more.
Like many of these new products, LibGuides took off! Steve recalls, "Once librarians had an opportunity to explore the LibGuides they were highly enthusiastic and wanted to begin using it as soon as possible. We had our demo site by May 1 and were a full-fledged customer by July 1, 2007." Today, the librarians at Temple University manage 562 guides in 68 subjects.
Fast Forward to 2022
Over the past 15 years, Springshare has seen plenty of growth. LibGuides remains an industry staple but we've done so much more since 2007!
- Our SaaS platform is used by more than 7,500 libraries in 106 countries around the world.
- There are 456,500 LibGuides currently published worldwide.
- We've launched 7 new library-centric tools.
- Springshare Support has answered roughly 310,000 tickets.
- You've been busy, too! LibAnswers users have answered more than 38 MILLION questions since we began tracking in 2014. That includes 19,930,000 tickets and 18,502,000 chats!
- Springshare Training has run 2,500+ training sessions.
- We've sent out 54 newsletters - we know you love those LibGuides Tips and Tricks!
- The Springshare Lounge has seen thousands of discussions.
- Our virtual conference, SpringyCamp just celebrated its 10-year anniversary with an overall attendee count of around 60,000 people!
At the end of the day, our mission remains the same: helping librarians shine in providing great service to users! Here's to the next fifteen years (and more) of supporting libraries and librarians around the world!
- The Springy Team