Open source subject guides

As a reference librarian, I must contend with all manner of subject areas that patrons want to ask me about when I'm doing reference. When I am doing cooperative chat reference and am helping a patron from another college, I am grateful for any subject guides that the patron's home library (i.e., the library at the college where the patron is a student or faculty) has created.

Making these subject guides is labor intensive (striking the right balance between too many and too few of the key resources; maintaining links; adding new sources and deleting defunct or outmoded ones; thinking about usability; etc.) The technology that the library goes with in setting up subject guides can really make a big difference in the quality of the guides; if a librarian has a hard time figuring out how to create or update his/her page, the page is likely to be orphaned by its creator. I was pleased to see that in the second issue of the Code4Lib Journal there is a nice survey of open source technology options for creating subject guides:

Corrado, Edward M. and Kathryn A. Frederick. "Free and Open Source Options for Creating Database-Driven Subject Guides." Code4Lib Journal No. 2 (2008).

Photo: "Seward Park: Interior views: Young people at Reference desk." NewYork Public Library. http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/id?100921

Virtual Reference Desk conference makes a comeback as "Reference Renaissance"

The Virtual Reference Desk conference, which last took place in 2005, will take place again this year in August under the new name, Reference Renaissance. I wish could go, but it is at the same time as when I'm going on vacation in Maine. I last attended the conference in 2001 in Orlando and was greatly energized by the focus on digital reference issues in all the presentations and poster sessions.

via Virtual Dave...Real Blog