*

LibGuides are pages created to help librarians share information online 24

hours a day seven days a week. It is a Web 2.0 content management and

sharing tool. Both the elementary and high school libraries at Saint Mary’s

Hall have access to LibGuides. The elementary library LibGuides were

created by me while I was an Intern. I also created several high school

LibGuides. I was excited to learn how to construct LibGuides. Today, there

are many institutions using LibGuides. Following are some reasons why a

library would use LibGuides.

Subject Guide Organization – Librarians and teachers can create their

subject guide categories to fit their curriculum.

Widgets – LibGuides may be customized with specific widgets to engage

students in the page content.

Multiple Uses- LibGuides may be used for generating subject guides and

research pathfinders.

Social Media Integration- Students can capture RSS feeds for guides.

LibGuides applications are available on Mobile Devices such as the iPhone

and the iPad.

Here are

some screen

shots of my

LibGuides.

The tabs at

the top of the

screen

contain drop

down menus

for each

grade level.

The OPAC is

also linked

here.

Here is the

fourth grade

summer reading

LibGuide. I

have also

created tabs to

connect to the

Middle School

and High

School for ease

of use.

Many parents

have students in

all three

schools.

Therefore, all

school are

included in the

top tabs.

Parents and

students can

access these

through their

computers as

well as their

Mobile

Devices.

The LibGuides that I created took a tremendous amount of time.

However, when one looks at a LibGuide, one does not realize the time and

effort that went into the creation of those LibGuides. I worked on the

LibGuides after school in the high school library and then worked on

them at home. I estimate that I spent a total of about 50 hours on these

guides. However, I could not count all of these hours in my Internship

because of other things that I needed to count. When I proudly showed

my fourth grade team, the response was , “Oh, that’s nice. Those look

good”. I wanted to start screaming, but, once again, realized that librarians

do so much work behind the scenes that no one realizes to make the

library run smoothly.

LibGuides encompasses a vast learning system on the Web. To learn more

about LibGuides visit

http://libguides.com/community.php?m=i&ref=libguides.com