Campbell, Lisa A

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Scholarship@Western

Evaluating and ManagingLIBGUIDES how can we better reach our users?Lisa CampbellWILU 2014 In the last 22 days, we deleted 266+ guides.   How did we get here?   A P R I L  2 0 1 3  We questioned usage statistics.   “LibGuide authors interpret the numbers as VLJQLƩFDQWSDWURQXVDJH and quantitative support for the creation of more LibGuides.”Castro-Gessner, Wilcox, Chandler, 2013, p. 253“I am considering hits to indicate that someone arrived at a guide, found it useful, and continued using it or returned later.”Slemons, 2013, p. 22  J U N E  2 0 1 3  Springshare announced a new version of LibGuides   J U LY  2 0 1 3  We hired a web content strategist.   O C T O B E R  2 0 1 2  -  P R E S E N T  We tackled many improvements, with some success…   However, some challenges persisted. Unclear titles and descriptions  Similar  ●  ENGLISH_125_2	  ●  ENGLISH_125	  ●  English	  125	  Winter	  2013	  ●  English	  125	   Acronymic ●  UROP	  Fall	  2012	  ●  UC	  107:	  WISE	  RP	  ●  PEM	  ●  ULAM	      Ambiguous ●  Read	  Read	  Read	  ●  Eat,	  Pray,	  Love	  ●  WriIng,	  CiIng,	  &	  Research	    Inconsistent ●  History	  202:	  Doing	  History	  ●  ANTHRBIO	  368/PSYCH	  338:	  Fall	  2012	  ●  Library	  Guide	  for	  ARTDES	  399:	  WriIng	  in	  Art	  and	  Design:	  CriIcal	  Issues	  in	  Art	  and	  Design	  	  Confusing search/browse results GOOGLE  U-M LIBRARY WEBSITE Broken content •  Broken links •  HTML errors •  Outdated media •  Empty space •  Browser or device issues •  Time-sensitive statements   O C T O B E R  2 0 1 3  We conducted a content inventory. Methods ALL GUIDES INDEX + EXTRAS GOOGLE ANALYTICS Findings LibGuides have become the biggest piece of our web presence.  •  Nearly 1,000 guides with ~7,000 pages of content.  •  120 account holders from dozens of library units •  creating an average of 164 new guides per year — more than 1,100 pages Findings Much of our content is not reaching its intended audience.  •  Out of over 1 million views in 2013: –  Google was the top referral source –  Five guides accounted for more than a quarter of total traﬃc, much of it coming from users outside the U-M community –  Average user visited 2 guide pages for less than 2 minutes –  “home” page for many guides received 50-80% of all views Findings We struggle to define LibGuides, their purpose, and what makes them eﬀective.  •  Most guides were subject, course, and outreach guides, but there were many other uses. •  Format issues •  Best practices outdated or in conflict Findings We aren’t taking advantage of many useful features.  •  Only around 30% of boxes were collecting click-through statistics and being crawled by the link checker. •  Only 8.3% of boxes were linked copies (vs duplicates) •  Low use of comments, feedback, user-submitted links   F E B R U A R Y - A P R I L  2 0 1 4  We presented our results to various stakeholder meetings.   M AY  2 0 1 4  We launched a library-wide cleanup initiative.   What’s next?  Questions? Lisa Campbell lacamp@umich.edu References Castro-Gessner, G., Wilcox, W., Chandler, A. (2013). Hidden patterns of LibGuides usage: Another facet of usability. ACRL 2013 Conference Proceedings. Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/acrl/sites/ala.org.acrl/files/content/conferences/confsandpreconfs/2013/papers/CastroChandlerWilcox_Hidden.pdf  Castro-Gessner, G., Wilcox, W., Chandler, A. (2014). Reaching your audience: LibGuides part 2, author and user practices [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/1813/36268  Slemons, M. Design standards for LibGuides: Does better design lead to greater use? (Master’s thesis). Retrieved from https://cdr.lib.unc.edu/record/uuid:e9704531-bcd4-4c00-8124-821247be010a  Springshare (2014, January 9). Getting ready for the transition to LibGuides 2. Retrieved from http://blog.springshare.com/2014/01/09/transition-to-libguides2/    

Evaluating and managing Libguides: how can we better reach our users?

https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1116&amp;context=wilu

Evaluating and managing Libguides: how can we better reach our users?

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