The following images show, for example, what has happened to our tabbed boxes following migration:
Last week we took the plunge and migrated everything from our Libguides platform to the new Libguides version 2. This is something we've been anticipating with a mixture of excitement and apprehension for quite a while. The actual migration process was all managed by Springshare, we just set a date and when that date arrived, all our content was copied across to the new system. On the whole the migration has gone well, all our basic pages have migrated perfectly and I love the new look. The images below show the two systems; although they still look quite similar the new system does have a much more modern, 'clean' feel. The libguides are also wider which makes them look clearer and less cluttered. Unfortunately we do have a few issues with our migration because we used quite a lot of coding in our libguides system. We used coding to create interesting pages with rotating picture galleries, tabbed boxes etc. These all need to be checked and reconfigured for the new version. The following images show, for example, what has happened to our tabbed boxes following migration: We did know we were going to have these issues before we migrated, so we didn't have too many surprises! Now the Reference Team are working hard to check every page of every published guide and rectify any issues. Once everything has been checked we will go live with our libguides 2 system. We're hoping this will happen in time for the new school year in August.
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I recently completed the ‘Digital Environment’ module of my course. I was actually quite sorry it was over as I really enjoyed it! For my final piece of coursework I looked at two technological trends that are likely to affect libraries over the next five years. There are quite a few areas that would be relevant but I decided to look at Maker Spaces and Open Educational Resources (OER). In this post I’ll share some of the information that I found out about OER (I’ll look at maker spaces in another blog post).
Some Universities, like MIT, offer Open University courses that anyone can attend for free! MIT have already reached 100 million people worldwide with their courses and they hope to reach a billion by 2021 (MIT). The move towards open access obviously has implications for publishers. Many University academics are beginning to publish their work in open access journals. Their work has already been publically funded, so they believe the public should have open access to that research. The increase in availability of open access articles eliminates the need to pay licence fees. This could potentially, in the UK for example, save universities, colleges, libraries and museums millions of pounds every year (Green, 2013). Publishers' revenue is likely to be impacted as open access publishing becomes more popular.
The student can spend as much time as necessary working through this material. Lesson time is spent applying that knowledge in engaging activities, with the teacher’s support. These teacher videos can also be supported by the provision of other relevant videos, tutorials etc. for students to use before their lesson.
As we approach the end of the year, we know that the date is approaching when our Libguides statistics will be reset to 0 for the beginning of 2014. Some of our libguides have been so popular this year that I thought we should keep a record of that success - look at Pablo Neruda!!.... So, our most popular libguide ever, created by Joana, is about the Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda. If I had been asked to choose at the beginning of the year which of our libguides would be in that position, Pablo Neruda would have been way down my list of choices - quite a surprise! Joana created an excellent guide on the poet and his love poems which appears to be filling a gap in online information that many people around the world are finding very useful.
As you can see from the table above, we have many other libguides this year that have been viewed more than 2,000 times, with all of the Reference Team contributing to this success. As in previous years, we have found that guides relating to specific topics taught within the school are usually very successful and popular. The guides that are created with close teacher collaboration, then promoted by the teacher for coursework and homework are always well-used too. We will begin at 0 again on 1st January 2014 and will aim to achieve even higher usage of our guides next year... although I think 35,544 is going to be tough to beat!!! You can see our current statistics (and links to the guides) here: http://libguides.tts.edu.sg/topicguides Explore all our libguides by subject: http://seniorlibrary.tts.edu.sg/web/learningzone.html |
Suzanne Parfitt
I recently worked as Assistant Librarian at a British International School in Singapore. I've now relocated back to the UK and I am hoping to find a job that I enjoy as much as the one I've just left! Searching the ShelvesThis is my blog for interesting things to do with my work, my Continuing Professional Development (CPD), my studies or just anything that catches my eye relating to libraries, technology or books. Archives
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