I’ve been juggling a few projects for my internship, but one that I’ve been really engaged in is revising and creating research guides. My exposure to LibGuides came about as a graduate student. To be honest this experience could be coined as “LibGuide 101: An Introduction.” The initiative is keeping in line with Web 2.0 for libraries (academic and public alike), so it will be a valuable commodity to learn. In addition, they have been a helpful “go-to” reference source when answering questions at the reference desk. I have been able to recommend several guides to assist students and alumni with their requests. My goal is to spread the good word about these virtual nuggets of information.
To build the research guides at Montclair State University we use LibGuides by Springshare, which is not only user friendly, but actually fun to create. To me it’s reminiscent of Tumblr, which I’ve used on a few school projects (Literary Chicanas is one of my latest examples), except the layout and the concept for organizing information is different. However, uploading pictures, videos and adding text is what makes these two platforms distant cousins. After getting acquainted with the application, organizing and arranging the content has been like piecing together a creative puzzle of information.
Thus far, I’ve revised an existing reference sources guide and am in the process of creating a new guide on visual literacy. This project has been challenging in terms of choosing what visuals to use, defining visual literacy as a discipline and how to concisely explain existing resources in a clear and efficient manner. One of the nice things I’ve been able to incorporate is some of my photography. This is not only a great way to visually communicate information with users, but it also lends itself to my creative side. So for a creative soul, who thrives on sharing information it’s a win/win situation!