'The Mother of all LibGuides': Applying Principles of Communication and Network Theory in LibGuide Design

摘要

Since their development in 2007, LibGuides have captured the attention and the imagination of the academic library world, at least in the United States. The 2009 ACRL national conference saw crowded panel, roundtable, Cyber Zed Shed, poster, and contributed-paper presentations on the reception and use of Lib-Guides by libraries, librarians, and their constituents. Reactions to LibGuides were so positive that an ACRL blogger compared participation in the sessions to "being inducted into a cult."1 By the 2011 ACRL conference, LibGuides had so thoroughly taken root in the library landscape that only one presentation, which described an attempt to replace LibGuides with free, open-source alternatives, dealt with the product.2 Lib-Guides seem to be here to stay. As of this writing the LibGuide parent company, Springshare, has "3,856 sites live, and 53,800 librarian accounts. There are 319,000 published guides and currently [Springshare is] averaging about 100 million page views per month by 5.25M monthly visitors."3