How to ...

Today is becoming a "how to" day.  I'm busy creating a template for all the IB introductory guides for various disciplines.

I've created the skeleton and now I'm trying to use it to fill in the first one. I chose psychology as that was part of my undergraduate degree and I still am a keen follower of the field.   I've already done one on Development Economics - but that was a specific field within the Economics discipline.  I'm now wondering if as part of the template I should also include some "how to" on each section.

We've agreed that the pages would be:

* Start here (introduction)
* In the News
* Books and Physical resources
* Journals
* Online Resources
* Institutions and People
* Audio & Visual and social Media

We're trying to decide whether to put the "fields" within the disciplines (or whatever we'd call it) as a separate page linking to the various Libguides or to put that in the introductory page.  For example the discipline Economics has as fields, MacroEconomics, MicroEconomics, Development Economics etc.  Psychology would have Social Psy, Development Psy, Organisational Psy etc.

I've started looking at some Audio and Visual links, and run into the first thing - how to get an iTunes podcast feed onto the Libguide - it's something I did a couple of weeks ago and I've already forgotten and having to look up again.  The trick is to find the RSS or other feed, so I'm thinking in the template to have the standard introduction we use for each section, but then perhaps in another colour have a "how to" or at least link to the best resource on how to do it ...
I'm running into the problem of RSS being used less and less or the feeds being invisible.  Drat.

I found a couple of brilliant resources this afternoon.  This first one is a "how to" add media resources to your guide.  And then I found two seams of gold, first the psychology libguide of  UMass, which had some excellent journal links and then this excellent list by the Social Psychology Network of blogs, podcasts and RSS feeds.

Quite a productive day.

My first LibGuide

I've managed to make my first LibGuide, otherwise known as a pathfinder or guide.  It was a requirement for my current course INF406 "Information Sources and Services", which to be honest I enjoyed so much that I've decided to change the way I'm going on this degree from "youth and adult services" to a more digital and reference librarian bias.

Once I got my assignment I asked at school if there was anyone who wanted / needed a pathfinder and the Economics head asked for one on Development Economics.   I have to admit that Economics was never my favourite subject, neither in my undergraduate degree nor in my MBA.  Well, I liked and was terribly interested in the concepts and case studies, but hated the graphs and so called "academic rigour" that was applied to something that I found totally behavioural and that didn't follow any of the supposed "rules" or "theories".   Luckily things have moved on somewhat and it was quite a fascinating process deciding what to include and leave out of the pathfinder.

I was terribly (and luckily) constrained by the demands of the assignment that it was kept to 20-25 information sources, included at least 5 journal articles and 2 books and a limit of 2500 words. Otherwise it would have grown like topsy - speaking of which, Topsy.com is a rather nice new social media tool where you can agglomerate what's happened on the web within a specified time frame... cool for some time wasting if you're not busy researching anything else (try "chinese" and "homework" for some fun).

Anyway, here is my "official" libguide, which was submitted and the "unofficial" one, or rather the one the school will use which is much more extensive.  There are some pretty cool videos - and I've found a new favourite economist - Esther Duflo! Check her out.

I've learnt a TON by doing this. After I'd submitted a fellow student and experienced reference librarian who is a LibGuide ace - and taught me how to use it, showed me hers - I have a way to go yet, baby steps!