I decided early on that I wanted to work on our library website as it is something I feel has been desperately needed for many years, but so far we lacked the time to learn a program and design a site. However, we realise a pressing need in the department advocacy for our program, and one way to do this is to make it easy for the community to find us. Having a website means patrons can find all of the information they need in one place, instead of having to search multiple sites and links, email us or visit us in person to find answers to their questions. It also means we can share some of the fabulous things we are doing in our space and with the program, and celebrate what the students are doing.
Before I could start, I needed to watch several tutorials, and then quickly began to set up a page for my own grade levels and pages to group the Early Years, Primary School and Middle School together. I soon realised that there are limitations to what you can do in an individual guide and it was at that point I needed to meet with my TL to move forward and ensure we had the same ideas for the layout. Fortunately, we agreed on most things and were able to make a plan for going forward.
We want the website to be a place parents, staff, and students can use for resources and information. Each grade needs pages for their different units and we need parents to be able to easily access multiple pages/sections if they have more than one child. We also wanted this to be visually appealing, without a lot of tabs or drop downs. When I first began working on the site, we already had 13 tabs and I hadn’t created anything for the classes I work with.
Within a guide you can have a page or a subpage.
If we created a page for Middle School, we could only create a subpage for each grade level. It was not possible to then add subpages for each grade level’s units
We don’t want to have to edit the same information multiple times on each page
Lack of communication amongst the team. Only the TL was aware that we had a website, and no time has been given over to collaborate or train the rest of the team on Libguides.
Solutions:
It is important to map out your plan before you start, so you do not have to redo work.
Springshare suggests setting up a style guide so that there are common agreements on fonts/layouts/ colours used. If you are collaborating on a site, it is important that everyone understands the expectations so no unnecessary work is done or inconsistencies occur across the guides.
Make multiple guides if you want to have several subsections. These can be linked together through redirect urls that open in another tab/window.
Make sure all of your guides link back to the main guide so patrons do not have to search for the original when they open a new guide.
Map pages/boxes that you want to use in multiple places so that you only have to edit the original.
Copy pages if you like the layout and make changes from there, instead of restarting anew each time.
Collaborate with others. If you work in a division, perhaps there are boxes/layouts you can use from others. If you have a team, use the strengths of each member so that each person is responsible for a section. In this way, one person won’t be overwhelmed by all the work.
Finally, before going public, have a small group of patrons test the site to ensure links work and the functionality will meet their needs.
As I stated, I haven’t created this website from scratch. Below, I am listing the work that I did in moving the site forward.
Set the Primary, Early Years, and Middle School guides
Set up individual guides for each grade level by copying the pages the TL created and copying the home page of the Zug Campus Guide
Added content to the Search for books page (specifically, tutorials and pictorial guides, and links to different account related forms).
Added content to the ISZL Reads page, which was previously blank (Header, VIP Readers, Storyteller, Junior Library activities, Travelling Tale).
Created the content/guide for the Early Years section of the school.
Updated the audiobook and research resources for the different sections to reflect the suitability of the resources for each group.
Created a guide for my Grade 2 students. As units come up with relevant student resources, I will add links to the resources I have curated for them.
Enhanced the look of the site by updating the staff photos and adding colour, in the form of coloured tabs and outlines on the boxes.
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New Early Years Guide
Steps to Continue Moving Forward:
We want this site to become a living document that becomes the go to page for our community. In order to do this, I/we plan to take the following steps:
Link the site to the school homepage, in the place of the current link that brings you to the Destiny Homepage.
Promote the site to the community - share it in collaborative meetings/staff bulletins, and in the parent bulletin and on Facebook.
I have also reached out to the Ed Tech coaches to see what content they believe should be added. By ensuring their voices are included, we can involve them in the process and hopefully this becomes a site that is used by even more specialists.
Continue to add resources to support the grade levels I work with and plan to get feedback from staff to see how to continue to improve the site.
References:
Springshare. Best practices for images. Get help with libguides, cms, & e-reserves. https://training.springshare.com/libapps/image-best-practices
Springshare. Build a Libguide. Get help with libguides, cms, & e-reserves. https://training.springshare.com/libguides/building-guides
Springshare. Libguides admin settings and Look and feel customizations. Get help with libguides, cms, & e-reserves. https://training.springshare.com/libguides/admin
Springshare. Reusable content and style guidelines. Get help with libguides, cms, & e-reserves. https://training.springshare.com/libguides/style-reusable-content-guide
