Hooray! I have completed my first solo LibGuide! This Spring semester, I am an intern at the University of Pittsburgh's Frick Fine Arts Library under the direction of the wonderful, Ray Anne Lockhard.
LibGuides (short for library guide) are helpful tools for students and patrons to aid in research on specific topics. Ray Anne and I have jointly worked on her LibGuides this semester, but I have also authored my own guide, Information Literacy for the Frick Fine Arts Library.
The Frick Fine Arts Library is different. It is different from any academic library I have been in or worked at. I assumed that these differences were probably fairly confusing to new students and researches. Probably the main difference is that the FFA is a closed-stacks library, meaning that you as a patron do not have access to browse the books. This is hard to get students to understand. Also, our collection is so unique. Unlike Hillman Library (Pitt's main library branch) we only have books in our collection that relate to art, art history, and architecture. Sometimes, even if the book is art related it may be locating in Hillman based on the LOC call numbers. This is often confusing and frustrating to our students.
Presented with this problem, I decided to take on the project of creating a basic introductory to the FFA Library in the form of a LibGuide. Ray Anne had already completed a similar guide, Art History Foundations, but much of the information was pertinent to that specific class. I also wanted to focus on basic information literacy skills with my LibGuide (library terminology, search strategies, copyright information, plagiarism, etc.)
I've been working on this LibGuide for about the last month. My work was interrupted by the ARLIS/NA Conference two weeks ago and some other minor projects I continued to participate in at the FFA. But, alas! Today is the day! I have completed the LibGuide, submitted it to Ray Anne for approval, and published it on the World Wide Web.
I've been fairly secretive with my Guide before today, I wasn't really showing anyone my progress or work, save a few questions for Ray Anne. I guess I felt like I had a vision and I wanted to implement it the way the LibGuide was dancing through my head!
This Guide was alot of work! There is so much information to be shared, databases to discuss, and research techniques to teach that it is all far too much information to contain in one Guide. My biggest struggle throughout authoring the Guide was deciding what information to elaborate on, what to briefly discuss, and what to omit completely. Initially, I planned on discussing online encyclopedias, like Oxford Art Online, in-depth as I feel they are a great preliminary research tool and way more authoritative than Wikipedia. But, at the last minute, I decided to omit a detailed explanation of Oxford Art Online and went with a very brief write-up.
Also, as I was working from the University of Pittsburgh, not my home computer, the restrictions on the technology I could use inhibited me from provided some visual aids. For example, I would of loved to include screen shots a pages with information highlighted in order to help students find what I was discussing. Pitt's computers do not support screen capturing programs like Jing. Also, I wanted to embed a previous demo of Art Full Text that I did in my reference class last semester. Again, I was prohibited from doing so on Pitt's computers and had to upload the video from home.
Overall, I am extremely happy with my LibGuide! I am proud of the information I produced and the layout and design. Without further ado..
Information Literacy for the Frick Fine Arts Library
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