LibGuiding the way: how improved signposting can develop our understanding of student interaction with library electronic resources Sarah Taylor, Library

LibGuiding the way: today’s session The problem Back in time Understanding user behaviour by looking at enquiries The project, design process and end result Using guides Impact of guides Future developments

Once upon a time…

LibGuides: ten years of the dynamic guide Holistic approach to access help required to recognise that electronic resources access has many elements (Erb and Erb, 2014). LibGuides is “the democratization of the Internet” (Erb and Erb, 2014) as it allows librarians to create and maintain library web pages with little or no web authoring expertise. Basic principle of LibGuides is that it takes the paper guide and makes it electronic, and as the Internet has grown, these paper guides have been embedded on websites (i.e. the paper versions are digitised) and are often static as a result (Giullian and Zitser, 2015).

October 2008 Types of databases listed first, rather than actual databases Linking out, rather than providing information No explanation of what the databases contain, or why use them

October 2008: Subject pages Again, linking out rather than providing information Subject-specific information is in the form of a workbook, but the purpose of workbook is unclear Not clear that the link to electronic journals is a link to a list where titles must be searched for

May 2012: all change Information about what all these resource-types are The concept of a workbook has been changed to Database User Guide Linking out: “more information” is useful, but access should be paramount

July 2015: a comprehensive approach Access Discover@Bolton from here Detailed descriptions of databases Links to further sources of help (Quick Start Guides and a video) Tab format to separate resource types

How do we know what we don’t know?: enquiries

Implementing LibGuides: project overview Software purchased: LibGuides from American company Springshare, used by nearly 5,000 libraries worldwide for the provision of library-related information. Planned launch in time for the start of 2016/17 (link changes etc.) with minimal user education intended. Four planned phases, some running concurrently: Phase 1: Subject Guides (i.e. course specific) Phase 2: Help Guides Phase 3: Resources Guides Phase 4: Staff Guides

Implementing LibGuides Understanding of the issues and creating a vision. Guides were created during the summer of 2016 and branded as Subject Guides: try to avoid using software names. Sought examples of best practice, but are very much tailored to feedback already received and what we already knew about how our users wanted to access resources and information about services in general. Each course has its own guide; the idea is that students have a directed focus, rather than having to visit pages related to a broad range of topics. Aiming for consistency, but at the same time allow for subject-specific information to be included.

How do we know what we don’t know?

Implementing LibGuides: ask no questions The more content is added, the greater the need for granularity of structure: if the question is “Where can I find…?” then there is a lack of clarity. Subject guides should be compact in nature (Dalton and Pan, 2014); help guides are more significant in content. Using LibGuides allows these to be presented together, and this is a key principle. Our students sometimes think that “electronic resources” are different to electronic information sources, i.e. journals and articles. All academic content is academic content: there is no difference between electronic and print sources because that is merely the format, and in no way indicative of the academic suitability of the content.

A guide to Subject Guides 94 live guides: 86 subject-specific guides and 8 help guides including Copyright, Research Support, Reading Lists Online and Ebooks at the University of Bolton. All subjects should have a guide (if not, tell us!). Some information is replicated across all Subject Guides and most are similar in layout and appearance. Subject Librarians will be responsible for updating their guides.

Using guides: the numbers game Subject Guides were made available in September 2016; a small number of Help Guides have been made live since Since then, there have been over 12,000 views of the Subject Guides homepage (i.e. the complete list of guides linked to from the Library website) 94 live guides have been viewed a total of 29,869 times as of 22nd June 2017 The most popular (i.e. most viewed) guide has been viewed just over 8,000 times

Top page after Starting Point Use of Subject Guides: top 10 guides Data correct as of 22nd June 2017 Guide Views Top page after Starting Point Law 3920 Databases, journals and articles* Health and Social Care 1011 Databases, journals and articles Business Management 979 Psychology 771 Nursing 761 Education 748 Civil Engineering District Nursing 723 Art and Design 533 Accountancy 490 *overall most popular page for that guide

How do we know what we don’t know?: email enquiries 2016/15 2016/17 Total email queries: 81 Total email queries: 62 Electronic resource-related emails: 51 (63%) Electronic resource-related emails: 41 (66%) “How do I…” “I can’t do…” “What can I…” “I have a problem with…” “I need help with…” “This isn’t working…” “Where do I find…” “I’m not sure about this feature…”

How do we know what we don’t know?: enquiries E-resource related queries: 15/16: 71 per cent of total 16/17: 58 per cent of total Change: 55 per cent decrease Study skills queries: 15/16: 12 per cent of total 16/17: 9 per cent of total 25 per cent decrease

Reaching further with guides: Research Support One of eight live Help Guides to date. New content: includes the previous Guide for Researchers, but also covers open access and REF compliancy, UBIR, Research Data Management, sharing research and measuring impact. Linked directly the from Library homepage: no navigation required. Over 2,100 views this academic year. Most popular sections are Research at the University of Bolton and Referencing and Managing Research.

Reaching further with guides: next steps Consider usability across a range of student types. Use this work to improve visual presentation of content, for example, consider students’ experiences of social media and how this might translate into expectations for how a guide might look (Conerton and Goldenstein, 2017). Create a comprehensive range of Help Guides and Resource Guides that acknowledge variations in learning styles. Create Staff Guide to provide detail on resources and resource acquisition, usage of resources and user education, for example. Based on that, the approach had to be to not second-guess a level of knowledge. We know from [insert evidence!] that students do know [whatever it is they know!]. But there are things that they just will not know. For example, following a focus group, students mentioned that they did not know about the SCONUL access scheme, or indeed any access scheme. How can this be? We tell them about that at inductions; there is information on our website. But it was very clearly stated that they didn’t know about access schemes. However, they all knew about using other libraries. So we needed to change how we presented things to accommodate their actual knowledge, not what we thought they should refer to things by. Terminology used based on feedback from focus groups and analyses of queries. What we know versus what users know.

Bibliography Conerton, K. and Goldenstein, C. (2017) Making LibGuides works: student interviews and usability tests. Internet Reference Services Quarterly, 22(1), pp. 43-54 Dalton, M. and Pan, R. (2014) Snakes or Ladders? Evaluating a LibGuides pilot at UCD Library. Journal of Academic Librarianship, 40(5), pp. 515-520 Erb, R. and Erb, B. (2014) Leveraging the LibGuides platform for electronic resources access assistance. Journal of Electronic Resources Librarianship, 26(3), pp. 170-189 Giullian, J. and Zitser, E. (2015) Beyond LibGuides: the past, present and future of online research guides. Slavic and East European Information Resources, 16(4), pp. 170-180 Ream, T. and Parker-Kelley, D. (2016) Expanding library services and instruction through LibGuides. Medical and Reference Services Quarterly, 35(3), pp. 342-349 Based on that, the approach had to be to not second-guess a level of knowledge. We know from [insert evidence!] that students do know [whatever it is they know!]. But there are things that they just will not know. For example, following a focus group, students mentioned that they did not know about the SCONUL access scheme, or indeed any access scheme. How can this be? We tell them about that at inductions; there is information on our website. But it was very clearly stated that they didn’t know about access schemes. However, they all knew about using other libraries. So we needed to change how we presented things to accommodate their actual knowledge, not what we thought they should refer to things by. Terminology used based on feedback from focus groups and analyses of queries. What we know versus what users know.