Edubeacon

Over the recent holidays I took time to investigate some library support tools and came across Libguides.  It appears to have been around for a couple of years and has gone under my radar.  Libguides isn’t free but on the other hand, it’s affordable if it works.  I’ve been building research guides for teachers for the past ten years as individual files stored on the school server.  Having moved schools, it’s time to start again, so time for some Web 2.0 action.

This product is a research guide portal suitable for use by any sort of library.  Main features that I can see as I set out on a trial are:

• You can link a variety of resources including videos & audio
• It’s a community product so you can use other libraries’ guides as templates and tailor to your own clients
• It can be branded for your school or institution
• It’s web-based so you can build it from anywhere on the web
• Links are automatically checked regularly and reported for fixing

The Bushfires of Victoria libguide from the State Library of Victoria is a perfect example of the value of the community aspect of this program.  This is a fabulous guide that could be used by every school in Victoria following our horrific fires last February.  It’s comprehensive and also includes the history of bushfires in the state.

I’m very slow on the uptake with this product, perhaps because having a library staff member at my previous school doing a very good job of producing research guides was working well.  Knowing the value of research guides to the whole school learning community, as well as a knowledge management option – e.g. ‘it’s May, we’re doing local history’,  I’m looking for a solution.

It’s been suggested that a wiki would do the same job and be free.  I disagree at this point as I value the collaborative aspect of this tool, am balancing the time saving benefits and the quality of product.  Feedback from other users who may happen to read this post would be good especially within  7-12 education.