Background
LibGuides is a content management system (CMS) created by the Springshare company. Thousands of libraries across the world use LibGuides to manage content, design webpages and enhance students access to library resources. LibGuides is a tool used by libraries to manage content and provides a way for staff to edit their own content without the need for IT interference. The content management platform is easy to use, does not require coding training, and results in the opportunity for librarians to create LibGuides for specific research subjects, courses and resource guides for just about anything.
The staff at the University Libraries are heavy users of LibGuides to enable librarians to push content and organize research resources for students. The LibGuides are primarily used to pull links to frequently used resources such as academic databases and the library catalog into one easy to use space. The librarians also work with teaching faculty to create course guides to put specific course materials and resources in one spot for students to use and access. Because the University Libraries relies heavily on the use of LibGuides, in 2015 a group was formed to investigate the usability of the current LibGuides. The team completed a literature review on the current resources available regarding LibGuides, they designed a pre and post survey for UNLV librarians, and they designed an eight task usability study to test students' ability to use the LibGuides.
This research team reviewed the current status of the LibGuides at UNLV and found discrepancies between how useful and easy to use the guides were. After concluding their research the team created a set of best practices for the LibGuides and wrote an article to share this information with the academic profession.
The user research completed by the team led to the creation of these best practices for the design and use of LibGuides:
Now that the team had set out these best practices they needed to put the concepts into motion. After sharing the results of the user research with other librarians they were able to change how staff saw the LibGuides and how they were being designed. The post survey showed librarians had a greater sense of what students wanted and what the focus of the guides should be. One librarian commented that they were putting a greater focus on making the LibGuides for his subject more specific and with more detailed content and resources specific to the users of that LibGuide.
With this information the research team set out to make the LibGuides more usable and to use the best practices they had previously outlined, to inform the design of a LibGuides template to create a standard navigation and contact a librarian section. The team hypothesized setting the LibGuides up similarly across the dozens of guides in use at the University Libraries would result in easier to use guides, and provide a streamlined user experience across the dozens of LibGuides at library.unlv.edu.
After a recent software update to version 2.0, LibGuides underwent a drastic change that required staff to overhaul their current content and navigation structure to make sense of the migrated content and resources on the updated version. In an effort to streamline this migration, the team decided to test the new template with real users and then share the template with librarians for use on the updated LibGuides.
To ensure this LibGuides template is easy to use and provides a good user experience for students, the research team created a second usability test, this time with ten questions, to provide the team with feedback on the usability of the template. I was brought onto the project as the WADS intern to assist with editing the usability test, recruiting participants and conducting the usability testing.
Within this site you will find the method, results and design recommendations that resulted from this project.
The Team
This research project was a collaborative effort and the research team consisted of the following faculty members from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas University Libraries:
Kristen Costello, Systems Librarian
Darcy Del Bosque, Emerging Technologies Librarian
Susie Skarl, Urban Affairs Librarian
Michael Yunkin, Head of Web and Application Development Services (WADS)
The team previously wrote an article titled "LibGuides Best Practices: How Usability Showed Us What Students Really Want from Subject Guides". Based on this article, and the previous usability testing with the LibGuides, the team wanted to delve deeper into the success of these best practices outlined from previous research.
As an intern for the WADS team, I was brought on board to assist with recruiting users, running usability testing, and uploading the testing videos for the team to review and score using a rubric.