LIRT Document for 2008/2009

REVIEW OF WEB GUIDE SOFTWARE FOR LIBRARIES Library Instruction Round Table Teaching and Learning with Technology Committee Edited by Jason Puckett and Emily Love, Co-chairs

INTRODUCTION Most libraries have long since moved their subject or research guides onto the web. Over the last few years, more and more software products have appeared that are designed for librarians to create online guides. These range from free open source software to commercial products, and from programs requiring expertise in server administration to slick fully-hosted services that only take a few clicks to configure.

In 2008 the Library Instruction Round Table's Teaching, Learning and Technology committee (LIRT-TLT) decided to review a number of these products. The committee arrived at a consensus of what we considered essential review criteria like cost, learning curve, and technology requirements, and a number of recommended criteria like ease of customization and gathering statistics. Our members chose products to review based on their past and present experience with the software, and evaluated them based on those criteria. The committee chairs edited the final product and summarized the results in the following table.

This table can serve as a quick reference to the reviewers' conclusions. Each criterion is rated from 1-5 stars with the exception of cost. Cost is spelled out in dollar amounts as precisely as possible. Ease of use is an aggregate refers to both ease of software configuration and maintenance, and ease of guide creation. Hosting requirements refers to the amount of effort required on the library's part in setting up and installing the software on a web server (one star means difficult or extensive configuration is required, five usually means that hosting is provided with purchase). Available support means the resources available for help from the provider or user community using the product. For more explanation see the detailed reviews.

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LIBRARY A LA CARTE

Created by Oregon State University Libraries http://alacarte.library.oregonstate.edu/ Review by Dianna Sachs, Western Michigan Univeristy, [email protected]

Cost: Free (open source, available under GNU General Public License)

Ease of use and learning curve: Some tech knowledge is required in order to install the initial program, and to set up the templates. Once templates are installed, then it is relatively easy to add content and to edit. The program would probably require some training for the less techno-savvy, but it should be fairly intuitive for people with moderate technology comfort.

Hosting requirements - Ruby (1.8.6) - MySQL Database - Apache HTTP Server - RMagick Graphics Interface - ReCaptcha Key

Support provided: Extensive webpages are provided with tutorials and information on creating and maintaining guides. For an additional cost, support is available from OSU creators of the program for installation, but they do not provide subsequent formal support. OSU creators will answer questions as time permits. Administration documentation available, but hard to determine how useful or how clear it is.

Customization: Library A La Carte is customizable in certain areas, but one can add any institution's color scheme and logo at the top. Content is fully customizable, but one cannot adjust the style or format. Again, since the program is open source, it may be possible to change some things, but it would require significant programming knowledge.

Compatibility with ezproxy: Yes.

Institutions using the product: Oregon State University (creators)

Ability to create templates for consistency of guides: Yes. It comes with a left-side column of basic information, and options for one or two additional columns for the main content. No other choices for templates exist, but since this is an open source program, it may be possible for a programmer to hack it.

Reliability of product: Good. As it is open source, it should be available "forever" so long as it is maintained. Usage statistics collection: Possibly, but it does not come with a program. It would need to use another program (such as Google Analytics) to track usage of the pages as you would any webpage.

Potential for user-contributed content: As this is an open source program, then theoretically this would be possible, but one would have to create it on-site.

Searching/indexing/tagging, etc -- ease of finding content: Very good. One can browse by subject or course, use a keyword search box, or choose tags from a tag cloud. The tag cloud and organization of the browsing list can be customized.

Ease of interlinking / reusing content across pages: Users can create "content module boxes" which can be transferred whole to other pages. Content modules can be limited to a single user, or be available to all users at any institution. Content modules can subsequently be edited for the individual page (without changing the original) if necessary.

Ability to embed video, rss feeds, etc: Yes, relatively simply. Libraries can also embed widgets like Meebo.

LIBDATA http://libdata.sourceforge.net

Review by Justine Martin, Minnesota State University, [email protected]

Cost: Free, open-source using a GNU General Public License Ease of use: Good Hosting requirements: Fair

Available support: Adequate. The LibData development team at the University of Minnesota can provide some support.

Learning Curve: There is a high learning curve for the administrator/implementation side of LibData. The program needs to be hosted on an Apache web server with knowledge of SQL and PHP code. Once LibData is setup on a web server, librarians can create guides via online logins. Librarians need training since page creation is not completely intuitive. The author must know the process to create and/or add “resources,” (an annotated database/record with optional URL link) to each guide. With training, librarians can use LibData to create subject guides (labeled Research QuickStart), course guides (CourseLib), and webpage templates (PageScribe).

Customization: Yes, depending on the SQL and PHP expertise of the library’s LibData administrators.

Compatibility with ezproxy: Yes, LibData creates “resource” entries for each database, website, or library item (e.g. book, video, etc.). These entries contain a field to enter the ezproxy URL for a webpage/site.

Institutions using the product: University of Minnesota, St. Cloud State University, Minnesota State University Mankato.

Ability to create templates for consistency of guides: Yes, LibData can create templates to standardize page design and content organization. LibData contains several customizable categories and information types to organize resources on a page.

Reliability of product: LibData is very reliable.

Usage statistics collection: Yes, statistics for individual guides are collected each time a page is loaded.

Link checking: Links must be manually checked.

Potential for user-contributed content: None

Searching/indexing/tagging, etc -- ease of finding content: None

Ease of interlinking / reusing content across pages: Every source in LibData has an individual “resource” record that can be added to multiple pages. Entries can be globally edited by accessing the “base resource” record.

Ability to embed video, RSS feeds. Etc : RSS feeds can be embedded into LibData guides. Information about embedding videos could not be found.

AT&T KNOWLEDGE NETWORK EXPLORER

Review by Kathy Rosa, Chicago State University, [email protected] Cost: Free

Ease of Use: Easy to use but there are some confusing menu options.

Hosting Requirements: Web accessible - http://www.bluewebn.com/index.html

Support: Excellent but more support is available in AT&T States.

Summary: The AT&T Knowledge Network Explorer provides Internet educational resources for early childhood, K-12, College, and professional groups at no charge. Designed for librarians, teachers and trainers, the resources covered in this review include Blue Web’n and Filamentality. Both resources are easy to use with fill in the blank guided search capability and guided development of online learning activities. Tutorials, seminars and other training information are available on the site. Users can access these resources from the web site. Blue Web’n and Filamentality are both highly recommended.

Blue Web’n is a collection of reviewed websites and activities chosen by professional educators and searchable by subject, grade level, and format (activities, lesson plans, etc.). Filamentality is a tool for librarians, teachers, and trainers to create five types of learning tools. The program includes:  Hotlists: terrific for creating subject resource guides such as finding aids or pathfinders.  Scrapbooks: allow learners to access and download images, sound files, videos, etc. from links that you have selected. Suggestions for use include assembly of downloaded files into showpieces such as a newsletters or slide presentations.  Treasure Hunts: lead students to a variety of web resources that will foster a deeper understanding of a topic.  Subject Samplers: provide students with a few interesting web sites that can be delved into and responded to in a more personal way.

ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA ONLINE WORKSPACE http://corporate.britannica.com/library/online/bol.html

Review by Kathy Rosa, Chicago State University, [email protected]

Cost: Approximately $.65 per user with a minimum starting amount

Ease of Use: Once a workspace is created, users can research topics in EB Online. Simply click on the “save to Workspace” button. Users can save text, images, sound, and maps to the workspace. The space is set up in a table format. Creators can also add notes, rearrange the entries and export the information to formats such as Excel. The Workspace may be viewed by students, however they cannot edit the page.

Hosting Requirements: EB online is web accessible with a subscription. Librarians, teachers and students may create point and click resource web pages with a subscription to Encyclopedia Online. The files are located on the EB server so local server space is not required. The logon procedure is simple, requiring a user created id and password. The resource is available at any location with your institutions authentication procedure.

Support: Help files are available by topic and index

Summary: This resource may be best suited to librarians, teachers and middle through high school students. College undergraduates may also benefit from the organization capability of Workspace and the wealth of information available in Encyclopedia Britannica Online.

LIBGUIDES http://www.libguides.com/

Review by Ellen Hampton, Baylor University [email protected] and Lia Friedman, University of California San Diego, [email protected]

Cost: The annual license fee ranges from $899 to $2,999 ($549 for K-12 libraries), and is based upon FTE. A full list of institutions using the product can be found here. There are extra costs for additional optional add-ons: $60 for custom domain mapping and $199 for uploading images, producing XML reports and creating local backups.

Ease of use: LibGuides is very easy to use for even a non-tech-savvy librarian. It is easy to get started adding content and get a guide up and running quickly. There are quite a few options for adding different types of content (including video, RSS feeds, and images), and it is easy to edit and move content around, and to copy content across different LibGuides pages. Some of the choices for adding content might be confusing to the technologically non-savvy. Guide authors can easily embed both video and rss feeds. LibGuides has a built in index by subject, author and most heavily used guides. Guide creators can add tags to create another discovery tool.

Hosting Requirements: LibGuides is fully hosted by Springshare and is automatically updated and backed up. The latest LibGuides report claims a 100% uptime. LibGuides not only has a responsive staff team, there is also a support blog, a forum for questions about the product, ongoing training webinars, a Twitter stream, and an active community of LibGuides users called the "Springshare Lounge."

Customizing: LibGuides can be customized to a certain degree - libraries can create customized headers, and the number of columns and column widths and layout can be changed around very easily. Admins can also add custom javascript or css to their pages. Colors and fonts can also be changed. However, all LibGuides have a very distinctive look and feel, despite customization. The administrator of the LibGuides account can set the shape of boxes and tabs and colors to be the same across their library's pages, but beyond that, unless an institution creates local practices for fonts and layout, guides could look inconsistent.

The administrator of the LibGuides account can set a default proxy URL for the entire institution's pages. When creating a guide with links to subscription resources, one can check a box which automatically adds the proxy URL. LibGuides has a built in link-checker, which checks all links except those within rich text boxes. However, the only links which LibGuides returns as broken are 404 pages. If the proxy link is broken, or the link goes to the wrong page, these will not be reported as broken links.

Interactivity: Patrons using LibGuides can give feedback, rate resources, and can submit links for consideration to be included in the guide. LibGuides makes it easy to collect not only system-wide, but specific resource related statistics.

SUBJECTSPLUS

http://ithacalibrary.com/subsplus/

Review by Dawn Amsberry, Pennsylvania State University, [email protected]

Overview: SubjectsPlus is an open source tool for dynamically managing library subject guides and pathfinders, as well as the library’s A-Z list of databases, staff list, FAQs, and a suggestion box. Developed at the Ithaca College Library, SubjectsPlus is an expansion of Pirate Source, a subject guide tool developed by Joyner Library at East Carolina University. With the permission of the Joyner Library, SubjectsPlus is released under the GNU GPL.

Cost: Free. The source code is available for download from the website: http://www.ithacalibrary.com/subsplus/download.php

Ease of use: Installation of the program requires some technical expertise. Once the program is installed, the administrator can add multiple users and subject areas. It is then a fairly straight- forward process for librarians to begin adding records to their subject guides using a template. No programming knowledge is required to create and edit the subject guides. According to the website, new enhancements are planned for January 2009 that will make the process more intuitive; for example, users will be able to drag and drop to rearrange the rank order of resources within a category on their subject page, rather than assigning a rank number.

Hosting requirements: From the SubjectsPlus website: "SubjectsPlus requires PHP (> 4), MySQL (> 4.1), and a web server. You will need permission to create a new MySQL database, and for some functions, to make individual folders writable. Basic familiarity with PHP and MySQL would be helpful. The admin requires that cookies be enabled, and that javascript be turned on."

Support: The website has a user-friendly editable wiki (parts of which were still under construction in January 2009) with excellent documentation on installation, customizing, and trouble shooting. Instructions for librarians on how to create and edit the subject guides are very clear. There is also a SubjectsPlus Google Group where users can post questions, suggestions, and tips. Andrew Darby, the program’s creator, answers questions through the Google group, and also provides his e-mail for users who need more help.

Customizing: The color and font on the interface can be customized to match the library’s web design. The categories of resources (such as journals, dictionaries, web sites, etc.) can be customized, as well as the order in which the categories appear on the page. The librarian can also create a “Try These First” list of subject-related databases that will pop up when the user enters the subject guide.

In addition to the list of resources, the subject guides also include a side bar on the right of the page that can be customized in many ways. The standard template includes the librarian’s contact information, and if desired, a photo. The side bar can also include a list of relevant call numbers and their subjects, FAQs, useful links, RSS feeds, and research tips. Librarians can choose to embed a chat widget in the sidebar.

End user-generated content: SubjectsPlus does not currently allow end-user generated tags or other kinds of user-generated content, but it does include a suggestion box feature. Students can submit a question or comment (either anonymously or including a name) through the “Talk Back” page, and staff will post the question with an answer. Since many librarians choose to include a chat widget on their subject guide, the Talk Back module may not be necessary in some cases, and users may not want their questions posted publicly, even if they are anonymous.

Summary: Although SubjectsPlus does not offer the full functionality of some of the other similar tools, it is a user-friendly application that has the capacity to incorporate many interactive Web 2.0 features, and would work well in smaller libraries that don’t have a full CMS.

Sites using SubjectPlus:

 Central Washington University  Colgate University  Concordia College  CUNY Graduate Center  Elmira College  Emmanuel College  Georgia Southern University  Grinnell College  Holland College  Ithaca College  Middlebury College  Millsaps College  Paul Smith's College  Université du Québec à Chicoutimi  University of Victoria  Wheelock College

MEDIAWIKI www.mediawiki.org

Review by Rosalind Tedford, Wake Forest University, [email protected]

Cost: Free, but it requires a server to run it on and a person to administer it.

Ease of use: Back-end administration is easy for a techie, especially with the use of extensions, but knowledge of PHP code, etc., is required. There is no wysiwig editor and navigation is not built in, so guide authors need to know the basics of Wiki syntax.

Learning curve: The back end is not too bad for a techie, but would be tough for someone not familiar with administering these kinds of services. The administrator also needs to be able to edit PHP at the very least. End users who understand wikis will find it not bad, but learning how to link to a document/uploading a document is difficult. Page creators must also learn a certain amount of wiki syntax or markup/down to get formatting in it.

Interlinking and reusing content across pages is not always easy. Guide authors would have to copy/paste from one page to another to use common content. Linking to a document from more than one page requires knowing the exact filename.

There may be extensions available to embed video, RSS feeds, etc. An extension for embedding YouTube videos does exist. Hosting requirements: server (or space on a compatible server); PHP and MySQL.

Support: No formal support is available, but there is an active developer community. Since the project is open source, a great deal of documentation has been written by various users. MediaWiki has proven reliable, but libraries must be willing to upgrade and patch the software as needed.

Customization: Users can create 'skins' that have standard elements for each Wiki page. There is a whole range of optional extensions which may provide even more standardization and can be used to create templates.

Compatibility with ezproxy: LDAP authentication was used on the reviewer's site. Since MediaWiki is highly extensible, there may be a way to incorporate ezproxy authentication as an option.

Usage statistics collection: The software gathers some statistics on its own, and libraries can put a page counter in the skin with PHP programming. Versioning would let libraries gather more usage information.

Link checking: Link checking does not exist natively in MediaWiki, but may be available as an extension. Libraries could use other services for link checking.

End user-generated content: MediaWiki provides the potential for user-contributed content, but libraries would have to provide users with an account.

Searching/indexing/tagging, etc -- ease of finding content: MediaWiki has a search feature. Authors can add categories and tags to pages to aid searching. There may be plugins to improve this functionality. Table 1: Summary of Review Results

hosting available Name cost ease of use requirements support AT&T Knowledge Network Explorer free *** **** ** Encyclopedia Approx. $.65 per Britannica Online *** user **** ** Workspace

LibData *** ** ** free $899-$2,999/yr Libguides (plus optional **** ***** ***** extras)

Library a la Carte free ** *** ** MediaWiki free **** *** **** SubjectsPlus free **** *** ****