Testing and Templates: Building Effective Research Guides

The Savannah College of Art and Design has nearly 12,000 students at 5 separate campus locations, and offers more than 40 areas of concentration within art and design. The students are incredibly career-minded, and class assignments are built to mimic the professional experience. Through the SCAD Libraries, students have access to nearly 90 databases, many of which are professional level resources, and hundreds of trade and scholarly print journals. Using Spring Share\u27s LibGuides, the small research and instruction team has created a series of course and subject specific research guides to highlight the professional databases and teach valuable information literacy skills, for both occasions when we are able to visit classes and for those times when we cannot. However, through Spring Share\u27s click-tracking, we noticed the students were only exploring the homepage tabs of each guide, and therefore not grasping the full scope of resources available. With the migration to LibGuides 2.0, we saw we had an opportunity to re-assess our many guides and implement change. After a series of usability testing, we created two separate templates, one for subject guides and one for course guides, that were more efficient and effective research tools. The new guides better highlight professional level resources, while still providing relevant tips and research assistance