There was a good turn out of interested staff from Library Administration, Library IT and Information Services Librarians at meeting held to discuss how the front page for access to the Subject Guides was going to look when it is swapped over to the LibGuides software. Heather Jenks spoke briefly at the beginning of the meeting to focus the discussion on to this one area and then handed the discussion over to Grant Barrie and Catherine Jane from Library IT who have been working with Information Services staff to create a mock-up of the essential and desired elements for the page.
There followed a lively and informative discussion with input from all present. Agreement was reached on the following:
Subject guides are defined as having being listed on the University website courses, subjects and qualifications A-Z list
http://www.canterbury.ac.nz/subjects/
Topic guides can be created for subjects not listed in the above A-Z list and an access point can be created from a related Subject Guide/s.
For the Subject Guides homepage the agreement was reached on the following:
• The “Email alerts” box will be displayed on the right hand column.
• The “Featured Librarian” box will be displayed on the right hand column.
• The middle column will display an A-Z list of Subject Guides.
• The “Featured Guides” box will be displayed on the left hand side column. Moving the featured guides to this location has meant that the list on display is restricted. IT was agreed that this page needs to be refreshed on a weekly basis. The update will be carried out each Monday morning by Library IT staff. Information Services Librarians agreed that they would email Library IT staff if they wanted their subject guide to be displayed on a certain week. It is expected that there will be more requests received than there are spaces to display guides, and it was agreed that the email needs to contain an explanation to help Library IT prioritise which guides should be featured.
• The tag cloud will be displayed on the left hand side column.
• The “Browse by Subject” box which is part of the hard wired display design for pages that are accessed after the homepage is not able to have its heading changed. The six University Colleges (five Colleges and the School of Law) will be the access points in this box, and when the users clicks on one of the Colleges, all of the related guides will display.
There was a brief discussion on the Library block that is under development for use in LEARN (the learning management system formerly known as MOODLE), as direct links to the subject guides will be part of LEARN.
A Steering Group will be established to ensure that there is an infrastructure in place to oversee and maintain the continuing development of the LibGuide software.
Heather
We originally agreed that the new version of the homepage would go up on Friday. However it has since been agreed that it would be desirable for the changes to be made ASAP so we have more lead-in time to see the page in context before the start of term. As we will have complete control over the A-Z list of subject guides that will be in the centre column we can do this, because we can link back to any guides that have not yet been converted to libguides. You can see a draft of what this column will look like on my test page – http://canterbury.libguides… Please let Library IT know if you think that your link is incorrect, missing, or misnamed etc.
I am working on the rest of the new homepage layout now, and will put it up as soon as it is ready. I will be adding the six colleges to the Browse by Subject box, then gradually deleting the existing ones as I remove the connections between them and any existing subject guides. I will add links to the new categories to existing guides, but owners can edit these later.
Please get back to Library IT with any questions or concerns at any time.
Catherine