Albuquerque-Bernalillo County CommunityGuides and LibAnswers
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LibGuides
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LibAnswers
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The librarians at Albuquerque-Bernalillo County (ABC) Libraries found CommunityGuides & LibAnswers to be versatile tools in helping them serve a population of over 500,000 people.
Their CommunityGuides site boasts a wide variety of content – they have subject guides covering everything from genealogy to composting to Star Wars!
They also use the guides as an important tool in their computer classes – David Hurley, Digital Services Manager, tells us that they use the guides "not
just to advertise the classes, but to organize the content, and even – using the survey tool – get evaluations from the students."
But the ABC Libraries don't just use their guides to share information with their patrons – they also use their system as a staff intranet.
CommunityGuides' group functionality allows them to keep staff information separate from other guides, while the ability to restrict access based on IP address
helps them to keep these guides hidden from the public.
Clearly the ABC Libraries are using all the bells & whistles of CommunityGuides – but what's their favorite feature? David says it's an oldie but a goodie –
"We really like the ability to reuse content, even outside of the CommunityGuides system." The ABC Libraries have taken advantage of the API Utility to embed
their featured resources directly into their libraries' home page.
CommunityGuides isn't the only one that plays well with others – the libraries' home page also sports a LibAnswers widget that gets used night and day.
How do we know? David tells us: "The query spy is one of my favorite things in LibAnswers. It is really interesting to see how people are using the service, and
great to see all the times someone found their answer at 3am."
It's not just the night-owls who are using LibAnswers – the ABC Libraries caught our attention several months ago because they had over 11,000 views on a
single question in a matter of 5 days! An online trivia contest about the Old West – one with a large cash prize – found people all over the country scrambling
to find the winner of an 1886 horse race. The ABC Libraries came to the rescue!
(Want to learn more? Check out our blog post!)
We're pleased as punch that we get to work with the awesome folks at the ABC Libraries – thanks for sharing with us!
Cool Guides to Check Out
Local Music - http://libguides.cabq.gov/localmusic
Star Wars Universe - http://libguides.cabq.gov/starwarsuniverse
Popular Questions and Answers
Do you have books for the Kindle? - http://libanswers.cabq.gov/a.php?qid=35353
Is there a way for me to access my library account online? - http://libanswers.cabq.gov/a.php?qid=29909
