by Amanda Clossen, learning design librarian
The LibGuides Expert Team would like to thank everyone for your dedication to the LibGuides migration! This is new territory for us, and there’s been a lot that needs to be addressed as we move such an enormous amount of content from one system to another. When we set up the processes and procedures for our ambitious timeline, the LibGuides Expert Team had three goals in mind. First, was to ensure the continued quality of our guide content, second was to ensure that this transition was feasible for the Libraries’ faculty and staff, and third, to see that as much as possible could take place before classes started.
We understand that for many units, full migration will have not taken place by the fall semester. We want to let you know that this is no cause for alarm. The hard deadline for guide migration is January 1, 2016. At that point in time, we will be well on our way to changing our Guides landing page from solely an alphabetical list to a tool that allows for more browsing flexibility (as WELL as an alphabetical listing of guides). Many of the current requirements for guides are in anticipation of this transition. As guides are submitted and approved, the current links in the A-Z guide list are changed to redirect to the new guides. This means, for instance, if you link to the APA citation guide in one of your old OR new LibGuides, the link will continue work, linking to the current guide, and then linking to the new guide when it is migrated.
Due to the diligence of our campus colleagues, a number of the campus course guides are already transitioned! We also commend the campuses who have started to build course guides for the first time. Since they have done so much work, we are looking to migrate the campus course guide pages for each campus to the LibGuide version before the beginning of the semester.
Take a look at the Shenango page for an example of a campus course guide page.
If you are just getting started with your own migration, take a look at a few stellar guides as an example:
As always, please let the LibGuides Expert Team (ul-lget@lists.psu.edu) know if you have any questions.