Best Practices for Creating Library Resource Guides: also known as class guides,research guides, subject guides, and pathfinders At the Belk library we make a distinction between a research guide and a class guide. Our Research guides are broader in nature and include resources that are discipline specific. Our class guides are course specific and address the information needs of a particular course and may even support a specific assignment. Not all libraries make that distinction. The online resource guide you are creating for this assignment is similar to our class guides. Having made that distinction, throughout this session, I am going to use these terms interchangably. Why create resource guides? Well, as you know, libraries contain a vast amount of information , so librarians have adopted the resource guide as a means of pulling together relevant resources into a single portal for student research on a particular topic. (not overwhelm the student) also, librarians use resource guides for instruction and collection development tools.

Design & Usability Page Layout Organization/Arrangement Content Selection Online Format When you are creating a resource guide these are some of web design and usability issue that you should take into consideration. Call them ou t. After we review these topics we will take a look at and compare 3 or 4 different research guides.

Page Layout Font Background color Headings, Titles, Labels Frames Text Research Based Web Design and Usability Guidelines – us dept. of health and human services .Call Out Use familiar font types, black text on plain high contrast backgrounds. Use bold text for headings, titles, and labels to draw the users attention. Avoid clutter, which means limited text and use of frames. Moderate amount of white space to avoid scrolling. All of these things improve user readability. Show examples of guides

Organization/Arrangement Menu Headings, Titles, Labels Categories Alphabetize Location/Access point Important information on top,(get help, contact info) , use a menu to allow users to find efficiently what they want, group related elements in categories using headings that are clear, well-located, and descriptive. Organize information within categories clearly and logically perhaps by alphabetizing the resources. Location of the resources guides within the website is important – access points. Another words how easy or difficult it is to find the resources guides from the homepage? Is there a link from the homepage to the resource guides. Show examples of guides.

Content Selection Broad Specific Annotations As I mentioned before, at the belk library we make a distinction between research and resources guides. Research guides cover the broad spectrum of resources available in a subject discipline and resource guides are customized to a specific class or assignment. A resource guide might include links to articles, where a research guide would not. Questions you might consider when you are preparing a resource guide: how effective will this guide be in assisting students to complete assignments and research projects? What steps are of concern to a student starting a research project and are these steps obvious when the student is using the resource guide? You might include a mix of print and online resources but, e-resources are important for online guides-e-books, online journals, websites, and streaming media, our goal is for the user to have easy access to the material. Annotations can be very helpful to the user-try to be consistent with the length of the annotation. Other enhancements might include a promotional box with librarian contact information, notices of new library resources, building in links to online instructions on how to use the resource.

Online Format Web Page Wiki There are 2 types of online guide formats that I am aware of web pages and wikis. Web page format lends itself to uniformity, at Belk we use the web page format a template so all guides look the same. The template gives the guides a clean look which I think improves readability. which but are difficult to keep up-to-date. (we use dreamweaver macromedia software and it is cumbersome to go in an make changes to the guides and then upload to the server) Wikis solve that problem. With the wiki format the guides are easy to create and edit and organize content.

Web Page Research Guides for Education ASU-Belk Library http://www.library.appstate.edu/reference/subjectguides/education.html UNCA-Ramsey Library http://bullpup.lib.unca.edu/library/rr/edresearch.html WCU-Hunter http://www.wcu.edu/3611.asp

Wiki Subject Guides Ohio University BizWiki http://www.library.ohiou.edu/subjects/bizwiki/index.php/Main_Page St. Joseph Count Public Library http://sjcpl.lib.in.us/subjectguides/index.php/Main_Page Biz- started as 3 web page subject guides which he organized into one wiki subject guides, searchable,

Helpful Links Research Based Web Design and Usability Guidelines : http://www.usability.gov/pdfs/guidelines.html