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Highlight and Deliver Electronic Content & Services

Libraries are always looking for innovative ways to highlight and promote their services, and deliver electronic content. LibGuides is a simple and affordable way to enhance your library's web presence and highlight and deliver online services and content to patrons.

Create Departmental Portals

Creating library portals for academic departments and highlighting the related library resources is an excellent way to build stronger relationships with academic departments. This helps faculty and students use the library resources more efficiently, and it advertises the many services and resources available in the library.

Create Course-specific Guides

Use LibGuides to create course-specific library guides. The professor informs you what assignment(s) he has given for the coming semester, and you create a library guide specifically for the students in that course, highlighting the relevant library resources they can (and should) use.

Publish Customized Content for Individual Patrons/Faculty

For academic libraries, helping faculty with research by creating specific Guides helps build relationships with academic departments. Further, you could build Guides for students doing graduate thesis! In public libraries, creating Guides for customers in need of research assistance is a great way to develop meaningful relationships with users.

Create and Maintain Reference Guides

LibGuides is an ideal tool to easily create and maintain great-looking, content-rich reference Guides. Full usage statistics provide feedback on the resources your patrons find most useful. With the "Post to LibGuides" button and collaborative features of LibGuides, creating and maintaining reference guides has never been easier — or more fun.

Support Distance Ed. and Online Programs

Enhance your library's support for Distance Education and Online Degree programs by publishing content and creating Guides built around the specific needs of the faculty and students enrolled in these programs.

Library Training

With LibGuides, you can quickly create and maintain training Guides that explain the use of library resources. Mix in a few interactive polls and ratings, and you'll find it's a great way to train customers how to efficiently use library resources.

Promoting the Use of Electronic Databases

LibGuides helps you promote the use of electronic content in your library. You can create Guides centered around a specific database(s), put up a screencast explaining its use, link to resources within, and so on. If you have a new, trial database, you can create a Guide about it, show patrons how to use it, place a poll soliciting their feedback, etc. More information and exposure of the new content will lead to more awareness, which will, in turn, lead to more usage.

Information Literacy Tool

LibGuides is an excellent tool to help you teach Information Literacy programs at your library. A great way to show patrons how to use library resources is to create and use Guides in your classes and training sessions. Think of it as a courseware solution made specifically for you, the librarian, to teach information literacy, while simultaneously showcasing the library's resources. Using LibGuides for this will also increase awareness about all other Guides in the system.

Start Pages for Patrons' Research

With LibGuides you can easily create start pages for specific disciplines or topics, which can serve as a starting point for patron's research. You can list all related library resources so your patrons have a start page from where they can begin their research on that topic. This helps eliminate the "noise" and points the patron in the right direction, and to the right resources, from the very start of their research.

Wiki-like Collaborative System

LibGuides is a great wiki-like tool for any type of collaboration, including creating staff or project Guides, sharing links, etc. It's a great way to improve staff communication and achieve better results within your library. All your collaborative projects in one place. Looking pretty, too!

Marketing Yourself

You are an information specialist, a knowledge seeker and (we are certain) an all-around great person. Web 2.0 is about empowering individuals to publish and share their knowledge with others. By creating Guides which help patrons find the information they need, and by having your contact information readily available to patrons, you are marketing yourself and your services in the most effective way.