Guide to LibGuides

Who is the primary audience for your guide?

• First year? Transfer students? Graduate students? Faculty?
• Students in a specific program?
• Students in a specific class?
• Students who have had library instruction (is this guide designed to accompany a specific library instruction session?)

What level of skill and/or experience do you expect your learners to have?

• How much experience with college assignments (brand new or at least a year)?
• How much library instruction have they had (none? some?)
• How much knowledge do they have about their major field (beginner? Intermediate)?

Where/when do you intend that this guide be used?

• When students are researching a specific assignment?
• When they are looking for general resources for an assignment in a specific discipline?
• When they are looking for a specific type of resource across multiple disciplines?
• Before/during/after your instructional session?
• At home?  In the library? In class?

What are the learning outcomes of this guide?

• Think of learning outcomes in the context of SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound/Targeted) goals.
• Formulate learning outcomes as operational skills your students can perform:
  • You will be able to identify...
  • You will be able to distinguish...
  • You will be able formulate...
  • You will be able to compile a list...
• Every guide will have learning outcomes or objectives; sometimes they will be provided by the department faculty you are partnering with
• Make the learning outcomes clear to the learner so they know what to expect.
• The clearer your outcomes, the more easily assessment can be added and the more useful your guide will be.

How will you know if the learning outcomes have been successfully achieved?

• It’s important to define success criteria and measurement goals in order to determine if your instructional product is effective.
• Assessment can be performed using multiple modalities – in the instruction session, on Moodle, or self-assessment within the guide.
• Remember that assessment of your instructional design is important too, so try to configure assessment so you have access to the data.

Template form for Guide Planning

Terms Most often Not Understood by Users:

• Acronyms & brand names
• Database
• Library Catalog
• E-journals
• Index
• Interlibrary Loan
• Periodical or Serial
• Reference Resource
• Subject categories such as Humanities or Social Sciences

Terms Most often Understood by Users:

• Include uses of natural language such as: 
  • Find books
  • Find articles

Kupersmith, John. (2012). Library Terms That Users Understand. UC Berkeley: UC Berkeley Library. Retrieved from: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/3qq499w7

King, D. L. (2016, January-February). 12 tips to better writing for the mobile web. Computers in Libraries, 36(1), 12+