Category Archives: libguides

Break everything day

Since our library has had LibGuides, there has been a long-simmering desire among the librarians to standardize the layout of our guides. In fact, a few years ago we attempted to do this by building a standardized template that the librarians were encouraged to use. But this voluntary standardization did not work at all. The […]

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Hours widget

When we built the current library webpage in 2021, I wrote a homemade widget in JavaScript to display the library’s hours. It has worked consistently since then without any problems, perhaps surprisingly, since the code is very ugly. This original version of the widget drew upon a custom JSON file with the hours data, which […]

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LTI

My colleague Jeffrey Delgado and I have been setting up Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) to integrate our library’s LibGuides with the broader campus BlackBoard ecosystem. The advantage of this is that it will put library content in more course shells, and hopefully extend the reach of our guides and our other web content. The downside, […]

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Why we need version control in LibGuides

LibGuides doesn’t have version control. In my opinion, it really should. I’m not the first to suggest this. I am told that others have also requested this feature. Hopefully Springshare is working on this. One of the hurdles in implementing version control is that it can sometimes be confusing. Git is certainly daunting to newcomers. […]

Also posted in git, version control | Comments closed

LibGuides for non-librarians

Next month, I’m planning to teach a workshop for non-librarian faculty on how to use LibGuides. This will be a first for me. LibGuides is a very library-focused tool, and I am curious to see how it goes over with non-librarians. On the one hand, LibGuides is a very accessible, general-purpose CMS that would seem […]

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In praise of the Springshare Lounge

At some point not too long ago, CUNY’s Office of Library Services signed a deal with Springshare for a wide range of Springshare products. Springshare makes various tools to help run libraries, of which the most well-known is LibGuides, their CMS. Since CUNY signed this university-wide deal, our library has actively started using many of […]

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Idée fixe

There are some well-travelled paths in library research. I came across one of them this week when I was looking for articles on LibGuides. There are a lot of articles by librarians about LibGuides. On the one hand this is great (we have a comprehensive literature!), on the other hand, do I really have to […]

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A new library webpage for the new semester

This week our new library webpage went live, just in time for the fall semester. You can see it at https://library.kbcc.cuny.edu. It represents about 8 months of work: 4 months of technical work, followed by 4 months of organizational work. I particularly enjoyed the technical bits, while the subsequent, unavoidable bureaucratic work was not as […]

Also posted in bootstrap, homepage | Comments closed

No wrong info

As the (relatively new) admin of most of our library’s web content, my goal is to have no wrong info in our public-facing content. This seems pretty basic, but we’re actually not there yet. Part of the problem is that the library does not yet have control of some essential pages (the library homepage is […]

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Bootstrap and LibGuides

What is Bootstrap, and what can it do for my LibGuides? Bootstrap is the framework that underpins LibGuides, and you’ll find it gives you much more control over how your LibGuides work. Bootstrap provides a collection of CSS and JavaScript components that will help you build responsive web pages. Gaining an understanding of how Bootstrap […]

Also posted in bootstrap | Comments closed
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