Re: [CODE4LIB] lita
Based on previous experience, I doubt this truly captures whether someone thinks of themselves as a librarian. I've always found those categories arbitrary (an MLS does not a librarian make) and sometimes divisive. On Tue, Jan 6, 2015 at 11:58 AM, Andreas Orphanides akorp...@ncsu.edu wrote: There's a different dues schedule for librarians (-slash-certification required-slash-managerial) and support staff, so along that dimension it presumably gets tracked, at the very least. On Tue, Jan 6, 2015 at 11:51 AM, Cindi Blyberg cindi...@gmail.com wrote: Honestly, I don't know if ALA tracks whether people have an MLS/related degree or if that's self-selected. I know folks who call themselves librarians but who aren't degreed--those would be self-selected. I'll see if we can find this out--I'm curious! -Cindi (wearing my LITA hat) On Tue, Jan 6, 2015 at 11:43 AM, Haitz, Lisa (haitzlm) hait...@ucmail.uc.edu wrote: I'd be curious about something: how many LITA members are not librarians? I work in a library as a web developer, which includes a medical library, but I don’t have an MLS. So, question: is the Code4Lib list more open to technical folks, but not necessarily librarians? Lisa Haitz University of Cincinnati Libraries
Re: [CODE4LIB] lita
Honestly, I don't know if ALA tracks whether people have an MLS/related degree or if that's self-selected. I know folks who call themselves librarians but who aren't degreed--those would be self-selected. I'll see if we can find this out--I'm curious! -Cindi (wearing my LITA hat) On Tue, Jan 6, 2015 at 11:43 AM, Haitz, Lisa (haitzlm) hait...@ucmail.uc.edu wrote: I'd be curious about something: how many LITA members are not librarians? I work in a library as a web developer, which includes a medical library, but I don’t have an MLS. So, question: is the Code4Lib list more open to technical folks, but not necessarily librarians? Lisa Haitz University of Cincinnati Libraries
Re: [CODE4LIB] lita
You can see the Executive Director's membership reports on ALA Connect: Annual 2014 - http://connect.ala.org/node/225631 (pdf) Midwinter 2014 - http://connect.ala.org/node/216881 (pdf) Annual 2013 - http://connect.ala.org/node/208000 (.docx) Midwinter 2013 - http://connect.ala.org/node/197812 (.rtf) -Cindi LITA Immediate Past President On Mon, Jan 5, 2015 at 11:28 AM, Kevin Ford k...@3windmills.com wrote: I think this just goes to show, with the advent of the Internet, centralized authorities are not as necessary/useful as they once used to be. —ELM -- Maybe. I think it it recession-related. The high water mark for nearly all of the groups on that list is 2007 (2006 for one or two). The overall stats for ALA show the same membership pattern (increasing until 2007, decreasing thereafter): http://www.ala.org/membership/ membershipstats_files/annual_memb_stats I'd be interested to know if LITA's membership decrease is greater (as a percentage) than the others. Perhaps that would suggest forums such as code4lib peeled off some of those would-be LITA members. Otherwise, it just looks like a broader decline in ALA membership, probably for a few reasons: fewer librarians in the workforce, fewer institutions willing to pay professional membership fees, less willingness to pay those fees out of pocket, etc. Yours, Kevin On 1/5/15 10:12 AM, Eric Lease Morgan wrote: I’m curious, how large is LITA (Library and Information Technology Association)? [0] How many members does it have? Apparently it has around 3000 members this year. I found this on the ALA membership statistics page: http://www.ala.org/membership/membershipstats_files/divisionstats#lita Interesting and thank you. Code4Lib only needs fifty more subscribers to equal LITA’s size. I think this just goes to show, with the advent of the Internet, centralized authorities are not as necessary/useful as they once used to be. —ELM
Re: [CODE4LIB] lita
This is why we love you. :P (not a mistake. sent to list. sorry to spam but Andromeda rocksss.) On Mon, Jan 5, 2015 at 3:38 PM, Andromeda Yelton andromeda.yel...@gmail.com wrote: (Putting on LITA Board hat) To pull out some math in case you don't want to sort through the docs, and also make a correction: Yes, LITA's membership decline is faster than average for ALA. No, LITA is not the smallest division; ASCLA and United are quite a bit smaller. (Putting on personal hat) I find myself thinking of LITA less as the technology division of ALA and more as the libtech association where I get to meet non-technology librarians. I love getting to meet people I can talk Django and Heroku with (!), and I meet more of those in code4lib than in ALA. But I *also* love seeing how the tools of the libtech world do, and don't, support the needs of library staff and patrons more broadly. And I love learning how the issues that matter to us as technologists - copyright, data quality, privacy - impact librarians in other subfields. And, to be blunt, there are some damn fun youth services librarians, copyright librarians, instructional librarians, et cetera. And I meet them through LITA. (okay maybe that was my Board hat too. I can wear two hats at once! I am like Hydra. Well. Not Project Hydra. Or Hail Hydra. SO YOU HOPE.) On Mon, Jan 5, 2015 at 11:59 AM, Cindi Blyberg cindi...@gmail.com wrote: You can see the Executive Director's membership reports on ALA Connect: Annual 2014 - http://connect.ala.org/node/225631 (pdf) Midwinter 2014 - http://connect.ala.org/node/216881 (pdf) Annual 2013 - http://connect.ala.org/node/208000 (.docx) Midwinter 2013 - http://connect.ala.org/node/197812 (.rtf) -Cindi LITA Immediate Past President On Mon, Jan 5, 2015 at 11:28 AM, Kevin Ford k...@3windmills.com wrote: I think this just goes to show, with the advent of the Internet, centralized authorities are not as necessary/useful as they once used to be. —ELM -- Maybe. I think it it recession-related. The high water mark for nearly all of the groups on that list is 2007 (2006 for one or two). The overall stats for ALA show the same membership pattern (increasing until 2007, decreasing thereafter): http://www.ala.org/membership/ membershipstats_files/annual_memb_stats I'd be interested to know if LITA's membership decrease is greater (as a percentage) than the others. Perhaps that would suggest forums such as code4lib peeled off some of those would-be LITA members. Otherwise, it just looks like a broader decline in ALA membership, probably for a few reasons: fewer librarians in the workforce, fewer institutions willing to pay professional membership fees, less willingness to pay those fees out of pocket, etc. Yours, Kevin On 1/5/15 10:12 AM, Eric Lease Morgan wrote: I’m curious, how large is LITA (Library and Information Technology Association)? [0] How many members does it have? Apparently it has around 3000 members this year. I found this on the ALA membership statistics page: http://www.ala.org/membership/membershipstats_files/divisionstats#lita Interesting and thank you. Code4Lib only needs fifty more subscribers to equal LITA’s size. I think this just goes to show, with the advent of the Internet, centralized authorities are not as necessary/useful as they once used to be. —ELM -- Andromeda Yelton Board of Directors, Library Information Technology Association: http://www.lita.org Advisor, Ada Initiative: http://adainitiative.org http://andromedayelton.com @ThatAndromeda http://twitter.com/ThatAndromeda
Re: [CODE4LIB] Library community web standards (was: LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav)
that LITA UX IG would be more than happy to provide a venue for this type of discussion since it would fit the interest of UX IG perfectly. (I am chairing the IG this year; ping me if that sounds interesting and if there is anything LITA UX IG can help.) LITA IGs are super flexible. Cheers, Bohyun -- Bohyun Kim, MA, MSLIS Associate Director for Library Applications and Knowledge Systems University of Maryland, Baltimore Health Sciences and Human Services Library -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Megan O'Neill Kudzia Sent: Tuesday, September 30, 2014 1:24 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Library community web standards (was: LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav) I've been following with interest, and I think some really important points are coming out here. John, what you said about Tomcat vs. Jetty really resonated with me - maybe this is *yet another* place where we could split this thread, but I think for those of us straddling the gap between web design and web development, something like a reference guide for what the questions to ask even are, would be extremely helpful. As you said, the answer to many many questions is, it depends, and knowledge of those topics comes with experience. However, maybe (and I volunteer to help with this project, inasmuch as I can) a sort of expansion of the Guide for the Perplexed would be really useful for those of us who are no longer total beginners, but are sort of struggling to level up? That is, those of us with some experience of various projects could contribute anything public-share-able from our post mortem project conversations, relevant to each type of project? It's something I've been thinking about for some time, and I'm still not sure what an optimal structure would be, but I keep thinking it would be a really worthwhile project. I will also say that everything I've found on alistapart and libux has been incredibly useful! On Tue, Sep 30, 2014 at 11:05 AM, Joshua Welker wel...@ucmo.edu wrote: How many folks following this discussion are LITA members? Would anyone be willing to join LITA to be a part of an interest group on this subject? I will renew my membership in LITA if that is the best route to take. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Cindi Blyberg Sent: Tuesday, September 30, 2014 9:46 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Library community web standards (was: LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav) Oh, and if UX doesn't fit, y'all can establish the LITA Web Standards IG, or the LITA Code4Lib Web Best Practices IG, or whatever you want to call it. You need 10 LITA Member signatures: http://www.ala.org/lita/sites/ala.org.lita/files/content/about/manual/ forms/e5-igformation.pdf http://www.ala.org/lita/about/igs On Tue, Sep 30, 2014 at 10:44 AM, Cindi Blyberg cindi...@gmail.com wrote: *puts on LITA hat* There are several ways that LITA/ALA could play a role here. Publications: There is a series of books called LITA Guides. Great way to get the word out widely, but a static format. http://www.alastore.ala.org/SearchResult.aspx?KeyWords=lita There are also Library Technology Reports - a periodical. Still static, but published more regularly: http://alatechsource.org/ltr/index There is also the LITA UX Interest Group. IGs are fluid, volunteer-run (not appointed), and can pretty much do what they want. Publish and update something? Sure! Establish and run a virtual conference? Definitely! Have meetings and programs at conferences? Yes! Caveat: must be a LITA member. Happy to provide more info if needed. -Cindi of the many hats On Tue, Sep 30, 2014 at 10:34 AM, Joshua Welker wel...@ucmo.edu wrote: I definitely agree that we should adhere to larger web standards and that we should actively discourage conventions that libraries have adopted over the years that have nothing to do with wider standards and best practices (e.g. tabbed search boxes, content in sidebar regions). In fact, much of our work would just be bringing together information from several standards into a common location and putting a librarian stamp of approval on it. Some topics I had in mind: -Accessibility standards: screen readers, color blindness, keyboard navigation, alt tags, etc. -Text: readable fonts, colors, text alignment -Page layout: navigation location, sidebars, headings and subheadings, search box designs, database pages, mobile friendliness -Best practices for specific library platforms: LibGuides, DSpace, etc. Some official name would be required, of course. I also think it would be great if we could write a draft, bring it to an official ALA group like LITA
Re: [CODE4LIB] Library community web standards (was: LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav)
*puts on LITA hat* There are several ways that LITA/ALA could play a role here. Publications: There is a series of books called LITA Guides. Great way to get the word out widely, but a static format. http://www.alastore.ala.org/SearchResult.aspx?KeyWords=lita There are also Library Technology Reports - a periodical. Still static, but published more regularly: http://alatechsource.org/ltr/index There is also the LITA UX Interest Group. IGs are fluid, volunteer-run (not appointed), and can pretty much do what they want. Publish and update something? Sure! Establish and run a virtual conference? Definitely! Have meetings and programs at conferences? Yes! Caveat: must be a LITA member. Happy to provide more info if needed. -Cindi of the many hats On Tue, Sep 30, 2014 at 10:34 AM, Joshua Welker wel...@ucmo.edu wrote: I definitely agree that we should adhere to larger web standards and that we should actively discourage conventions that libraries have adopted over the years that have nothing to do with wider standards and best practices (e.g. tabbed search boxes, content in sidebar regions). In fact, much of our work would just be bringing together information from several standards into a common location and putting a librarian stamp of approval on it. Some topics I had in mind: -Accessibility standards: screen readers, color blindness, keyboard navigation, alt tags, etc. -Text: readable fonts, colors, text alignment -Page layout: navigation location, sidebars, headings and subheadings, search box designs, database pages, mobile friendliness -Best practices for specific library platforms: LibGuides, DSpace, etc. Some official name would be required, of course. I also think it would be great if we could write a draft, bring it to an official ALA group like LITA, and get them to adopt it after making their own tweaks. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Michael Schofield Sent: Tuesday, September 30, 2014 9:01 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Library community web standards (was: LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav) I am interested but I am a little hazy about what kind of standards you all are suggesting. I would warn against creating standards that conflict with any actual web standards, because I--and, I think, many others--would honestly recommend that the #libweb should aspire to and adhere more firmly to larger web standards and best practices that conflict with something that's more, ah, librarylike. Although that might not be what you folks have in mind at all : ). Michael S. -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Brad Coffield Sent: Tuesday, September 30, 2014 9:30 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Library community web standards (was: LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav) Josh, thanks for separating this topic out and starting this new thread. I don't know of any such library standards that exist on the web. I agree that this sounds like a great idea. As for this group or not... why not! It's 2014 and they don't exist yet and they would be incredibly useful for many libraries, if not all. Now all we need is a cool 'working group' title for ourselves and we're halfway done! Right??? But seriously, I'd love to help. Brad -- Brad Coffield, MLIS Assistant Information and Web Services Librarian Saint Francis University 814-472-3315 bcoffi...@francis.edu
Re: [CODE4LIB] Library community web standards (was: LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav)
Oh, and if UX doesn't fit, y'all can establish the LITA Web Standards IG, or the LITA Code4Lib Web Best Practices IG, or whatever you want to call it. You need 10 LITA Member signatures: http://www.ala.org/lita/sites/ala.org.lita/files/content/about/manual/forms/e5-igformation.pdf http://www.ala.org/lita/about/igs On Tue, Sep 30, 2014 at 10:44 AM, Cindi Blyberg cindi...@gmail.com wrote: *puts on LITA hat* There are several ways that LITA/ALA could play a role here. Publications: There is a series of books called LITA Guides. Great way to get the word out widely, but a static format. http://www.alastore.ala.org/SearchResult.aspx?KeyWords=lita There are also Library Technology Reports - a periodical. Still static, but published more regularly: http://alatechsource.org/ltr/index There is also the LITA UX Interest Group. IGs are fluid, volunteer-run (not appointed), and can pretty much do what they want. Publish and update something? Sure! Establish and run a virtual conference? Definitely! Have meetings and programs at conferences? Yes! Caveat: must be a LITA member. Happy to provide more info if needed. -Cindi of the many hats On Tue, Sep 30, 2014 at 10:34 AM, Joshua Welker wel...@ucmo.edu wrote: I definitely agree that we should adhere to larger web standards and that we should actively discourage conventions that libraries have adopted over the years that have nothing to do with wider standards and best practices (e.g. tabbed search boxes, content in sidebar regions). In fact, much of our work would just be bringing together information from several standards into a common location and putting a librarian stamp of approval on it. Some topics I had in mind: -Accessibility standards: screen readers, color blindness, keyboard navigation, alt tags, etc. -Text: readable fonts, colors, text alignment -Page layout: navigation location, sidebars, headings and subheadings, search box designs, database pages, mobile friendliness -Best practices for specific library platforms: LibGuides, DSpace, etc. Some official name would be required, of course. I also think it would be great if we could write a draft, bring it to an official ALA group like LITA, and get them to adopt it after making their own tweaks. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Michael Schofield Sent: Tuesday, September 30, 2014 9:01 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Library community web standards (was: LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav) I am interested but I am a little hazy about what kind of standards you all are suggesting. I would warn against creating standards that conflict with any actual web standards, because I--and, I think, many others--would honestly recommend that the #libweb should aspire to and adhere more firmly to larger web standards and best practices that conflict with something that's more, ah, librarylike. Although that might not be what you folks have in mind at all : ). Michael S. -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Brad Coffield Sent: Tuesday, September 30, 2014 9:30 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Library community web standards (was: LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav) Josh, thanks for separating this topic out and starting this new thread. I don't know of any such library standards that exist on the web. I agree that this sounds like a great idea. As for this group or not... why not! It's 2014 and they don't exist yet and they would be incredibly useful for many libraries, if not all. Now all we need is a cool 'working group' title for ourselves and we're halfway done! Right??? But seriously, I'd love to help. Brad -- Brad Coffield, MLIS Assistant Information and Web Services Librarian Saint Francis University 814-472-3315 bcoffi...@francis.edu
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
On Fri, Sep 26, 2014 at 7:29 AM, Alex Armstrong aarmstr...@acg.edu wrote: @Cindi: In my defense, I was being rhetorical as to why there's no plugin system. I wasn't trying to second-guess how you develop your products. Though I'm glad you're considering allowing more sophisticated customization for LibGuides. Navigation in particular is a thorny issue. No worries! I hope my response didn't come off as reactionary. We are happy to answer questions, even rhetorical ones. ;) (I hear you, but we were like, yeah, why *doesn't* that exist? Let's *do* it!) As for Gist/Git, there are repos out there, 20-some of them. We would very much like to replace the Lounge with something else in the future, and while I think GitHub is too high a bar for most of our users, it could play a role in us sharing with you and vice-versa. There's some simple stuff thatare worth documenting. For example, Josh mentioned that: The admin controls in LGseem to all be loaded dynamically via javascript, which makes them both very hard to customize and very easy to break. I have also noticed that changingthe ID of certain HTML elements in your template can have the unintended(and undocumented) effect of erasing particular admin features from your template. I've listed these IDs here: https://gist.github.com/alehandrof/ 9f083aa03c287931d9f0#file-required-for-admin-html We actually had this on our list of things to add to the LibGuides documentation. So, thanks for that, Alex! :) I'll see that it gets added--you're not the first one to alert us to this issue (nor was @gollydamn). Any ideas on where/how we can share things like this? I tried tweeting it to my 6 followers. To my surprise, it was not widely reported on :p We are happy to RT - just tag us @springshare. We also have a blog http://blog.springshare.com, and a web newsletter that goes out to every person with an account. I realize that this is us sharing rather than you sharing--if something else works, go for it, and if we can help, just ask. Keep being awesome, and know that we welcome your feedback. :) Thanks! -Cindi :) On 2014-09-25 23:48, Cindi Blyberg wrote: OK, one more tidbit on this. I was chatting with Slaven, our CEO, and told him of the chatter on the list and the idea of a community-developed, curated set of plug-ins, along with templates, themes, etc., and he's totally excited about this idea. He (and I!) would love it if you all would chime in on this and other ideas on the Lounge so that we can figure out how to make them happen. We're going to set up a group on the Lounge for techie admins, but our Lounge admin is in the midst of moving so it might take a day or two. Thanks for all this great feedback, everyone! We are listening, and want to make these things happen. -cb On Thu, Sep 25, 2014 at 3:22 PM, Cindi Blyberg cindi...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Alex, That's a great question! I would surmise that a plug-in system and other advanced tech features don't exist yet for a couple of reasons. First, we're a small company. We have eight products and a small development team; right now the priority is getting out v2 apps. Second, we have more than 4500 LibGuides customers, and some have more than one site. The vast, vast majority of those folks use LibGuides out of the box, with a few color customizations that they accomplish with the UI (or a lot, as you've seen...). Some folks are advanced enough to figure out and alter the default CSS and put their customizations in the Custom JS/CSS field. Then there is this group. :) There are a few LibGuides admins who do customization at this group's level who aren't on this list (or are you? :) ). I'd also second the Lounge (springsharelounge.com) as a good group. There's an academic libraries group there, which is quite active. Cheers. On Thu, Sep 25, 2014 at 1:07 PM, Alex Armstrong aarmstr...@acg.edu wrote: The web content workflow and governance issues that were brought up are really important. I would love to discuss them at excruciating length. But content ownership conundrums and the frustrations of WYSIWYG editors are broader issues that can be usefully taken up in other threads. I de-lurked here because I saw an opening to discuss LibGuides with other people who have a stake in it, especially as a lightweight CMS. I think Josh's description of its limitations was very good. His feature propositions, including that of a curated plugin system, were even better. I have a question though: Why doesn't it exist already? LibGuides is limited, though the v2 API looks promising for client-side stuff. We should be talking with Springshare about improving workflows for admins -- such as (an example I came across today) being able to upload more than one image at a time. And, in the meantime, there's other stuff we can do now: community docs, templates, themes, best practices, etc. I've been surprised by the lack
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
Jesse reminds me that I meant to point out that there is a Paste from
Word button in the RTE that will strip out all that microsoft nonsense.
Not quite what you were asking for (suppressing tags from the RTE--I passed
that suggestion on to the devs) but it's what we refer people to who break
their formatting accidentally with a massive paste. There's also a Paste
as Plain Text button that has a similar effect.
On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 1:32 PM, Jesse Martinez jesse.marti...@bc.edu
wrote:
I can commiserate!
The tactic we've used at our university was to use the data migration from
LGv1 to LGv2 as a means to convene guide authors and rethink
* the future overall layout of our guides (new side menu has been our
design choice but complicates preexisting three- and four-column layouts);
* their intended use (pastiche of related but independent boxes on the
guide or something with a simple flow/concise content -- it's a
philosophical discussion, for sure);
* breakdown of content (when it is appropriate to have long detailed pages
or break down into sub-pages, which have their own issues...);
* the strict use of accessibility policies (must set up strict policies
about funky colors fonts, minimize use HTML tables, content column layout
w.r.t. responsive design, etc.).
I feel our internal conversations and meetings about rethinking LibGuides
v2 with our staff have gone over well, and reiterating appropriate best
practices or suggestions whenever I field a LibGuides question have
birthed some improvements in guide construction. It's an ongoing battle, of
course!
There are some heavy-handed tactics in place here too. For instance we've
hidden the Fonts button in the guide editor using CSS.
span#cke_12 {display:none;}
This doesn't stop custom html or copy/pasting Word content (ugh) from
getting through, but it does allows us to say, nope, we're not supporting
Comic Sans!
On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 12:56 PM, Joshua Welker wel...@ucmo.edu wrote:
I lol'ed several times reading your message. I feel the pain. Well, it is
nice to know I am not alone. You are right that this in particular is an
organizational problem and not a LibGuides problem. But unfortunately it
has been an organizational problem at both of the universities where I've
worked that use LibGuides, and it sounds like it is a problem at many
other libraries. I'm not sure what it is about LibGuides that brings out
the most territorial and user-marginalizing aspects of the librarian
psyche.
Does anyone have any positive experience in dealing with this? I am on
the
verge of just manually enforcing good standards even though it will
create
a lot of enmity. LibGuides CMS has a publishing workflow feature that
would force all guide edits to be approved by me so that I could stamp
this stuff out each time it happens.
To enforce, or not to enforce, that is the question--
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of
outrageously poor usability,
Or to take arms against a sea of ugly guides,
And by forcing compliance with standards and best practices, end them?
Josh Welker
-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of
Will Martin
Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2014 11:34 AM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
4. Admin controls are not very granular. With most aspects of editing
a guide, you either have the option of locking down styles and
templates completely (and oh your colleagues will howl) or allowing
everything (and oh your eyeballs will scream). Some of these things
could very well be improved in the future, and some probably will not.
This! My librarians have successfully resisted every attempt to impose
any kind of standardization. Visual guidelines? Nope. Content
guidelines? Nope. Standard system settings? Nope. Anything less than
100% free reign appears to be anathema to them.
The result, predictably, is chaos. Our guides run the gamut. We have
everything:
- Giant walls of text that no one ever reads.
- Lovingly crafted lists of obscure library sources that rarely (if
ever) bear any relation to what the patron is actually trying to do.
- A thriving ecosystem of competing labels. Is it Article Indexes,
Article Databases, just plain Databases, or something more exotic?
Depends which apex predator rules this particular neck of the jungle.
- Green text on pink backgrounds with maroon borders. Other pages in the
same guide might go with different, equally eye-twisting color schemes.
I'm not even sure how he's doing that without access to the style sheet,
but he's probably taught himself just enough HTML to mangle things in an
effort to use friendly colors.
- Some guides have three or even FOUR rows of tabs. With drop-down
submenus on most of them, naturally.
-
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
One more great guide to share - a literary journal from a k12 in Australia:
http://home2.scotch.wa.edu.au/theraven_winter2014
For you LG admins out there - it's a series of RT content types that's
governed by an external stylesheet. They have LibGuides CMS, and this
private guide is in its own group.
*back to lurking*
On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 2:00 PM, Cindi Blyberg cindi...@gmail.com wrote:
Jesse reminds me that I meant to point out that there is a Paste from
Word button in the RTE that will strip out all that microsoft nonsense.
Not quite what you were asking for (suppressing tags from the RTE--I passed
that suggestion on to the devs) but it's what we refer people to who break
their formatting accidentally with a massive paste. There's also a Paste
as Plain Text button that has a similar effect.
On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 1:32 PM, Jesse Martinez jesse.marti...@bc.edu
wrote:
I can commiserate!
The tactic we've used at our university was to use the data migration from
LGv1 to LGv2 as a means to convene guide authors and rethink
* the future overall layout of our guides (new side menu has been our
design choice but complicates preexisting three- and four-column layouts);
* their intended use (pastiche of related but independent boxes on the
guide or something with a simple flow/concise content -- it's a
philosophical discussion, for sure);
* breakdown of content (when it is appropriate to have long detailed pages
or break down into sub-pages, which have their own issues...);
* the strict use of accessibility policies (must set up strict policies
about funky colors fonts, minimize use HTML tables, content column
layout
w.r.t. responsive design, etc.).
I feel our internal conversations and meetings about rethinking LibGuides
v2 with our staff have gone over well, and reiterating appropriate best
practices or suggestions whenever I field a LibGuides question have
birthed some improvements in guide construction. It's an ongoing battle,
of
course!
There are some heavy-handed tactics in place here too. For instance we've
hidden the Fonts button in the guide editor using CSS.
span#cke_12 {display:none;}
This doesn't stop custom html or copy/pasting Word content (ugh) from
getting through, but it does allows us to say, nope, we're not supporting
Comic Sans!
On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 12:56 PM, Joshua Welker wel...@ucmo.edu wrote:
I lol'ed several times reading your message. I feel the pain. Well, it
is
nice to know I am not alone. You are right that this in particular is an
organizational problem and not a LibGuides problem. But unfortunately it
has been an organizational problem at both of the universities where
I've
worked that use LibGuides, and it sounds like it is a problem at many
other libraries. I'm not sure what it is about LibGuides that brings out
the most territorial and user-marginalizing aspects of the librarian
psyche.
Does anyone have any positive experience in dealing with this? I am on
the
verge of just manually enforcing good standards even though it will
create
a lot of enmity. LibGuides CMS has a publishing workflow feature that
would force all guide edits to be approved by me so that I could stamp
this stuff out each time it happens.
To enforce, or not to enforce, that is the question--
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of
outrageously poor usability,
Or to take arms against a sea of ugly guides,
And by forcing compliance with standards and best practices, end them?
Josh Welker
-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of
Will Martin
Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2014 11:34 AM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
4. Admin controls are not very granular. With most aspects of editing
a guide, you either have the option of locking down styles and
templates completely (and oh your colleagues will howl) or allowing
everything (and oh your eyeballs will scream). Some of these things
could very well be improved in the future, and some probably will not.
This! My librarians have successfully resisted every attempt to impose
any kind of standardization. Visual guidelines? Nope. Content
guidelines? Nope. Standard system settings? Nope. Anything less than
100% free reign appears to be anathema to them.
The result, predictably, is chaos. Our guides run the gamut. We have
everything:
- Giant walls of text that no one ever reads.
- Lovingly crafted lists of obscure library sources that rarely (if
ever) bear any relation to what the patron is actually trying to do.
- A thriving ecosystem of competing labels. Is it Article Indexes,
Article Databases, just plain Databases, or something more exotic?
Depends which apex predator rules this particular neck of the jungle.
- Green text on pink backgrounds
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
Hi Alex,
That's a great question! I would surmise that a plug-in system and other
advanced tech features don't exist yet for a couple of reasons. First,
we're a small company. We have eight products and a small development
team; right now the priority is getting out v2 apps. Second, we have more
than 4500 LibGuides customers, and some have more than one site. The vast,
vast majority of those folks use LibGuides out of the box, with a few color
customizations that they accomplish with the UI (or a lot, as you've
seen...). Some folks are advanced enough to figure out and alter the
default CSS and put their customizations in the Custom JS/CSS field. Then
there is this group. :) There are a few LibGuides admins who do
customization at this group's level who aren't on this list (or are you? :)
).
I'd also second the Lounge (springsharelounge.com) as a good group. There's
an academic libraries group there, which is quite active.
Cheers.
On Thu, Sep 25, 2014 at 1:07 PM, Alex Armstrong aarmstr...@acg.edu wrote:
The web content workflow and governance issues that were brought up are
really important. I would love to discuss them at excruciating length. But
content ownership conundrums and the frustrations of WYSIWYG editors are
broader issues that can be usefully taken up in other threads.
I de-lurked here because I saw an opening to discuss LibGuides with other
people who have a stake in it, especially as a lightweight CMS. I think
Josh's description of its limitations was very good. His feature
propositions, including that of a curated plugin system, were even better.
I have a question though: Why doesn't it exist already?
LibGuides is limited, though the v2 API looks promising for client-side
stuff. We should be talking with Springshare about improving workflows for
admins -- such as (an example I came across today) being able to upload
more than one image at a time. And, in the meantime, there's other stuff we
can do now: community docs, templates, themes, best practices, etc. I've
been surprised by the lack of this material, considering how widely
LibGuides is implemented.
Does anyone else find this stuff interesting?
Alex
On 09/25/2014 05:48 PM, Cindi Blyberg wrote:
One more great guide to share - a literary journal from a k12 in
Australia:
http://home2.scotch.wa.edu.au/theraven_winter2014
For you LG admins out there - it's a series of RT content types that's
governed by an external stylesheet. They have LibGuides CMS, and this
private guide is in its own group.
*back to lurking*
On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 2:00 PM, Cindi Blyberg cindi...@gmail.com
wrote:
Jesse reminds me that I meant to point out that there is a Paste from
Word button in the RTE that will strip out all that microsoft nonsense.
Not quite what you were asking for (suppressing tags from the RTE--I
passed
that suggestion on to the devs) but it's what we refer people to who
break
their formatting accidentally with a massive paste. There's also a
Paste
as Plain Text button that has a similar effect.
On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 1:32 PM, Jesse Martinez jesse.marti...@bc.edu
wrote:
I can commiserate!
The tactic we've used at our university was to use the data migration
from
LGv1 to LGv2 as a means to convene guide authors and rethink
* the future overall layout of our guides (new side menu has been our
design choice but complicates preexisting three- and four-column
layouts);
* their intended use (pastiche of related but independent boxes on the
guide or something with a simple flow/concise content -- it's a
philosophical discussion, for sure);
* breakdown of content (when it is appropriate to have long detailed
pages
or break down into sub-pages, which have their own issues...);
* the strict use of accessibility policies (must set up strict policies
about funky colors fonts, minimize use HTML tables, content column
layout
w.r.t. responsive design, etc.).
I feel our internal conversations and meetings about rethinking
LibGuides
v2 with our staff have gone over well, and reiterating appropriate best
practices or suggestions whenever I field a LibGuides question have
birthed some improvements in guide construction. It's an ongoing battle,
of
course!
There are some heavy-handed tactics in place here too. For instance
we've
hidden the Fonts button in the guide editor using CSS.
span#cke_12 {display:none;}
This doesn't stop custom html or copy/pasting Word content (ugh) from
getting through, but it does allows us to say, nope, we're not
supporting
Comic Sans!
On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 12:56 PM, Joshua Welker wel...@ucmo.edu
wrote:
I lol'ed several times reading your message. I feel the pain. Well, it
is
nice to know I am not alone. You are right that this in particular is
an
organizational problem and not a LibGuides problem. But unfortunately
it
has been an organizational problem at both of the universities where
I've
worked that use
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
OK, one more tidbit on this. I was chatting with Slaven, our CEO, and told him of the chatter on the list and the idea of a community-developed, curated set of plug-ins, along with templates, themes, etc., and he's totally excited about this idea. He (and I!) would love it if you all would chime in on this and other ideas on the Lounge so that we can figure out how to make them happen. We're going to set up a group on the Lounge for techie admins, but our Lounge admin is in the midst of moving so it might take a day or two. Thanks for all this great feedback, everyone! We are listening, and want to make these things happen. -cb On Thu, Sep 25, 2014 at 3:22 PM, Cindi Blyberg cindi...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Alex, That's a great question! I would surmise that a plug-in system and other advanced tech features don't exist yet for a couple of reasons. First, we're a small company. We have eight products and a small development team; right now the priority is getting out v2 apps. Second, we have more than 4500 LibGuides customers, and some have more than one site. The vast, vast majority of those folks use LibGuides out of the box, with a few color customizations that they accomplish with the UI (or a lot, as you've seen...). Some folks are advanced enough to figure out and alter the default CSS and put their customizations in the Custom JS/CSS field. Then there is this group. :) There are a few LibGuides admins who do customization at this group's level who aren't on this list (or are you? :) ). I'd also second the Lounge (springsharelounge.com) as a good group. There's an academic libraries group there, which is quite active. Cheers. On Thu, Sep 25, 2014 at 1:07 PM, Alex Armstrong aarmstr...@acg.edu wrote: The web content workflow and governance issues that were brought up are really important. I would love to discuss them at excruciating length. But content ownership conundrums and the frustrations of WYSIWYG editors are broader issues that can be usefully taken up in other threads. I de-lurked here because I saw an opening to discuss LibGuides with other people who have a stake in it, especially as a lightweight CMS. I think Josh's description of its limitations was very good. His feature propositions, including that of a curated plugin system, were even better. I have a question though: Why doesn't it exist already? LibGuides is limited, though the v2 API looks promising for client-side stuff. We should be talking with Springshare about improving workflows for admins -- such as (an example I came across today) being able to upload more than one image at a time. And, in the meantime, there's other stuff we can do now: community docs, templates, themes, best practices, etc. I've been surprised by the lack of this material, considering how widely LibGuides is implemented. Does anyone else find this stuff interesting? Alex On 09/25/2014 05:48 PM, Cindi Blyberg wrote: One more great guide to share - a literary journal from a k12 in Australia: http://home2.scotch.wa.edu.au/theraven_winter2014 For you LG admins out there - it's a series of RT content types that's governed by an external stylesheet. They have LibGuides CMS, and this private guide is in its own group. *back to lurking* On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 2:00 PM, Cindi Blyberg cindi...@gmail.com wrote: Jesse reminds me that I meant to point out that there is a Paste from Word button in the RTE that will strip out all that microsoft nonsense. Not quite what you were asking for (suppressing tags from the RTE--I passed that suggestion on to the devs) but it's what we refer people to who break their formatting accidentally with a massive paste. There's also a Paste as Plain Text button that has a similar effect. On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 1:32 PM, Jesse Martinez jesse.marti...@bc.edu wrote: I can commiserate! The tactic we've used at our university was to use the data migration from LGv1 to LGv2 as a means to convene guide authors and rethink * the future overall layout of our guides (new side menu has been our design choice but complicates preexisting three- and four-column layouts); * their intended use (pastiche of related but independent boxes on the guide or something with a simple flow/concise content -- it's a philosophical discussion, for sure); * breakdown of content (when it is appropriate to have long detailed pages or break down into sub-pages, which have their own issues...); * the strict use of accessibility policies (must set up strict policies about funky colors fonts, minimize use HTML tables, content column layout w.r.t. responsive design, etc.). I feel our internal conversations and meetings about rethinking LibGuides v2 with our staff have gone over well, and reiterating appropriate best practices or suggestions whenever I field a LibGuides question have birthed some improvements in guide construction. It's an ongoing battle
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
Hey all, a few comments from the Springys. :) Thanks for this amazing feedback on the tools that you need to make your jobs easier. We are discussing internally and plan to come up with and add viable solutions to the roadmap for v2--some of them will be CMS-only, be aware, when they involve groups and such. Our goal with this product is to make it as tech-friendly as possible and your feedback is extremely helpful. Keep it coming! On to Josh's post, with specific answers to a couple of things: On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 10:27 AM, Joshua Welker wel...@ucmo.edu wrote: 2. Lack of a plugin ecosystem and any sort of server-side scripting. This is a major one for me. This limits the site to mostly static, manually-added content. Yes, you can embed RSS feeds and iframes and javascript widgets from third-party sites, but if you want to do anything more complicated than that, you are out of luck. We do plan to reinstate the remote scripts capability that v1 had. It's not plugins, but would this help with this issue? 3. Lots of tedious copy/paste work is required. Okay, not copy/paste per se, but if I want to change the boxes that appear in the sidebar column in a large group of guides, I am going to have to manually add and remove boxes on every single page. Not so! :) You can create a template that has permanent boxes by calling those individual content IDs. Go to Help Guide Templates Customize Guide Templates Fine Tuning Content for more. Or http://support.springshare.com/libguides/guidetemplates/customizeguidetemplates#s-lg-box-3819 (requires login--it's not a secret per se, but we can add more detailed documentation up if we're not giving it away to competitors. ;) ). -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Alex Armstrong Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2014 4:50 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav Brad, Sure, it's feasible. And it's much easier to do with LibGuides v2 than with v1. Whether it's a good idea or not depends on why you're considering building your site on LibGuides. Springshare provides amazing support, but the platform itself is limited. There's a trade-off to make regarding flexibility, complexity, etc. There's no efficient workflow that I've found. (There's no SSH/SFTP, no ability to tweak the CMS, etc. I'm currently drafting a description of my workflow, in the hopes of receiving suggestions for improvement.) A lot of what we do on LibGuides is a pretty stylesheet, precise content guidelines, and a lot of copy-pasting. I'm not trying to dissuade you. LibGuides has been incredible for us. I shudder to think where we would be without it. But we decided to build our site on LibGuides due to (ahem) local operational constraints. AFAICT, it seems that the bulk of your website is already on LibGuides. If you're reasonably happy with it, maybe take the plunge and see if it works for you :) Hope this helps, Alex On 2014-09-22 23:56, Brad Coffield wrote: Alex, Thanks so much for sharing your new site built in LG2. I love it. Simple, attactive, but very useable. It's very interesting to see an honest-to-goodness this actually looks like a real website and not like just some libguide library website built using lg. More and more I'm seriously considering LG2 as a feasible option for our library site. Thanks! Brad On Mon, Sep 22, 2014 at 3:29 PM, Joshua Welker wel...@ucmo.edu wrote: I was just curious in general. I'm always interested in data on web usability. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Alex Armstrong Sent: Saturday, September 20, 2014 12:34 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav I was actually a bit coy in my previous post. Our old site was reasonably battle-hardened for usability. It's not like we transitioned from three-column layouts and guides with three rows of tabs or anything. I'm still trying to come up with tasks for testing. I suspect a lot of the big stuff will be OK while a lot of the small stuff will be off. It's been really hard to test the latter. (And there is a glitches in our analytics so I'm also flying a bit blind.) Is there something in particular you're wondering about? Alex On 09/19/2014 07:50 PM, Joshua Welker wrote: Nice job. I like the simplicity. Let me know how the usability testing goes. Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Alex Armstrong Sent: Friday, September 19, 2014 10:28 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav Long time lurker, second time poster (if memory serves). We launched our new library website yesterday, which is
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
*takes off Springy hat for a minute* At my FPOW (Eastern KY U), we had a LibGuides group (a sub-group of the UX group) that wrote up a set of standards that was adopted by the library administration. The group also created and curated a style guide for authors to use (including reusable content). Guide editing (including style) was a part of each librarian's job responsibility, and if guides weren't up to snuff, it was addressed by the manager, based on feedback from the guides group. It worked pretty well, but we were a medium-sized library and used guides mostly for getting patrons to databases and the like. *Springy hat back on* If you'd like examples of style guides, they're out there. We've snagged a few in our Best Of site (pardon the v1, it's low on the priority list atm) - http://bestof.libguides.com/bestpractices?hs=a Thanks! :) On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 1:18 PM, King, Emily emily.k...@csn.edu wrote: At my previous institution, I struggled with the same issues as you (and probably most libguides administrators that have a large number of people creating guides). The only really positive experience that I have had was a fairly time consuming one. Every year, I sat down with each content creators to talk through the goals of their individual libguides, the specific problems I saw with their libguides, the usage statistics for those guides and the amount of time they were putting into the guides themselves. I also had support from administration that the guidelines would be enforced or the guides would be removed. Having that conversation with the data to back it up helped the librarians see why those things were issues and where they might be wasting their time. It worked better than a large meeting because we could talk about their specific case. When I first starting having these conversations, many of the librarians didn't realize understand the full impact their design decisions were having on patrons actually using these guides. For some librarians, I would also show them a libguide from a subject area they were not familiar with similar design problems to theirs so they could experience what their user might be experiencing with their guide. Although it was not universal and there are still problems like you described below, these problems are significantly smaller than they were. LibGuides biggest strength and weakness is ease of creation. Anyone can create, but creating *good* content for the web is hard. Emily King, MSLS Digital Services Librarian CSN Library Services Charleston Campus (702) 651-7511 http://www.csn.edu/library On 9/24/14 9:56 AM, Joshua Welker wel...@ucmo.edu wrote: I lol'ed several times reading your message. I feel the pain. Well, it is nice to know I am not alone. You are right that this in particular is an organizational problem and not a LibGuides problem. But unfortunately it has been an organizational problem at both of the universities where I've worked that use LibGuides, and it sounds like it is a problem at many other libraries. I'm not sure what it is about LibGuides that brings out the most territorial and user-marginalizing aspects of the librarian psyche. Does anyone have any positive experience in dealing with this? I am on the verge of just manually enforcing good standards even though it will create a lot of enmity. LibGuides CMS has a publishing workflow feature that would force all guide edits to be approved by me so that I could stamp this stuff out each time it happens. To enforce, or not to enforce, that is the question-- Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageously poor usability, Or to take arms against a sea of ugly guides, And by forcing compliance with standards and best practices, end them? Josh Welker -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Will Martin Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2014 11:34 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav 4. Admin controls are not very granular. With most aspects of editing a guide, you either have the option of locking down styles and templates completely (and oh your colleagues will howl) or allowing everything (and oh your eyeballs will scream). Some of these things could very well be improved in the future, and some probably will not. This! My librarians have successfully resisted every attempt to impose any kind of standardization. Visual guidelines? Nope. Content guidelines? Nope. Standard system settings? Nope. Anything less than 100% free reign appears to be anathema to them. The result, predictably, is chaos. Our guides run the gamut. We have everything: - Giant walls of text that no one ever reads. - Lovingly crafted lists of obscure library sources that rarely (if ever) bear any relation to what the patron is actually trying to do. -
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
Thanks, Josh, I'll pass this on! I'm familiar with Drupal and Wordpress
for menus and plugins--I have a WP site of my own (augh, don't look, it
sorely need updating, and I don't really write anymore), and EKU uses
Drupal as its web platform (the discussion about adding databases via CCK
was an interesting one).
For putting content boxes on pages--sounds like you got it. Give us a
shout at supp...@springshare.com if you run into trouble. Thanks!
On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 1:26 PM, Joshua Welker wel...@ucmo.edu wrote:
Cindi,
Thanks for hearing our feedback. As I've said before, I have always been
impressed by Springshare's service. Now I am getting help without even
having to ask. :)
Regarding 3, that sounds great. I have just been confused by the
documentation. It states that if my template uses {{content}} keyword, I
can't use the individual {{content_x}} keywords. But I thought the
{{content}} keyword had to be used to get page-specific boxes to appear. So
I need to remove {{content}} and replace it with {{content_col_1}} and
{{content_col_2}} etc? I will give that a try. I imagine it could solve a
lot of woes.
Regarding 2, the remote scripts box would indeed be useful for a lot of use
cases, and I will certainly be using it once it is implemented. However, it
isn't a solution for libraries who want to use LG as their only website, as
it requires that you have access to another website with server-side
scripting capabilities.
I still think a curated plugin ecosystem of some sort would be extremely
useful for a lot of things most libraries want on their website:
-a navigation menu builder like what is built into Wordpress and Drupal
(site-wide, not for a specific guide)
-a news feed that can show news in a slideshow format or in a blog-like
list
format
-a new books feed that pulls books automatically from something like an ILS
or discovery service
I maintain websites for two libraries, and in both cases LG is used as a
secondary site alongside another web application platform (Wordpress for
one, Rails for another). These three features I think are making the
difference between using LG as the primary website and using LG as the
secondary website.
Josh Welker
-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of
Cindi Blyberg
Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2014 11:47 AM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
Hey all, a few comments from the Springys. :) Thanks for this amazing
feedback on the tools that you need to make your jobs easier. We are
discussing internally and plan to come up with and add viable solutions to
the roadmap for v2--some of them will be CMS-only, be aware, when they
involve groups and such. Our goal with this product is to make it as
tech-friendly as possible and your feedback is extremely helpful. Keep it
coming!
On to Josh's post, with specific answers to a couple of things:
On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 10:27 AM, Joshua Welker wel...@ucmo.edu wrote:
2. Lack of a plugin ecosystem and any sort of server-side scripting.
This is a major one for me. This limits the site to mostly static,
manually-added content. Yes, you can embed RSS feeds and iframes and
javascript widgets from third-party sites, but if you want to do
anything more complicated than that, you are out of luck.
We do plan to reinstate the remote scripts capability that v1 had. It's
not plugins, but would this help with this issue?
3. Lots of tedious copy/paste work is required. Okay, not copy/paste
per se, but if I want to change the boxes that appear in the sidebar
column in a large group of guides, I am going to have to manually add
and remove boxes on every single page.
Not so! :) You can create a template that has permanent boxes by calling
those individual content IDs. Go to Help Guide Templates Customize
Guide Templates Fine Tuning Content for more. Or
http://support.springshare.com/libguides/guidetemplates/customizeguidetemplates#s-lg-box-3819
(requires login--it's not a secret per se, but we can add more detailed
documentation up if we're not giving it away to competitors. ;) ).
-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf
Of Alex Armstrong
Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2014 4:50 AM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
Brad,
Sure, it's feasible. And it's much easier to do with LibGuides v2 than
with v1. Whether it's a good idea or not depends on why you're
considering building your site on LibGuides. Springshare provides
amazing support, but the platform itself is limited.
There's a trade-off to make regarding flexibility, complexity, etc.
There's no efficient workflow that I've found. (There's no SSH/SFTP,
no ability to tweak the CMS, etc. I'm currently drafting a description
of my
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
On Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 7:15 PM, Michael Schofield mschofi...@nova.edu
wrote:
Q1. How complicated is it to change all 3 column guides to a single-column
left/right-nav layout?
A little. You can force the entire group [or all groups] to use a single
template, which is a huge time saver, except your guides' middle and right
columns will be in hidden columns rather than forced to collapse into a
single column. This was pretty confusing at first. We were afraid we
actually lost content during the migration. You will need to manually hit
every guide and change the layout to single-column, but that's just a click
of the button. If you have 400+ guides, though, that's 400+ clicks.
Alas, yes. Once we realized this was happening, our devs hashed it out and
will be rolling out a fix to the migration script so that this won't happen
again.
Q2. Three-columns or single column?
Single column. Users scan, and they scan the top and left-most portions of
the screen. Anything in the middle and to the right is lost. Also, three
columns on a responsive site is a little weird, because content is pretty
squishy; on tablets you might have pretty narrow left and right columns.
Actually, when you view a 3-column layout on a smaller screen, it scales
down to a single column. If you're seeing otherwise, can you send us some
examples in case this is a bug we need to fix? Thanks. :) The key here,
of course, is to have the most important information in the left-hand
column, and not to have too many boxes on a single page.
Q5. Has anyone split the main content column into two smaller columns?
LG2 makes it crazy easy to change number and percentage-based widths of
the columns. So you could still use the tabs-across-the-top template and
create a little 33% wide left sidebar column and a 66% wide right main
column.
One slight caution here: if you add a second content column to a side-nav
layout and the guide author wants to display nav pills for the page's
boxes, only the boxes from the first content column will be displayed as
pills. This is by design, but we've filed it as a known issue.
-Original Message-
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of
Blake Galbreath
Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 2014 6:37 PM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
I have always thought that left-nav was the UX standard for left-to-right
languages (as opposed to Arabic, eg.: http://www.france24.com/ar/).
Personally, I feel that right-nav makes more sense across the board, due
to the fact that it is less distance to travel for right-handed people. But
the convention seems pretty set in stone. I am also not sure how screen
readers deal with right-nav - although i am guessing that there is no
problem there programming wise.
Blake
On Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 3:24 PM, Brad Coffield
bcoffield.libr...@gmail.com
wrote:
Benjamin: Unfortunately we have authors who want *three* columns plus
left-nav... LOL
Margaret: Love the floating nav on that page. It's exciting that we'll
be able to leverage Bootstrap with our guides now. Moving the entire
library website to libguides CMS is looking more and more promising.
Some more thoughts:
I'm no UX expert but is it generally agreed that left-nav is the much
better choice? It seems like it to me. Given current web wide
conventions etc.
One big issue to switching to left-nav in v2 is the amount of work
it's going to take everyone to convert all guides to the new layout.
Which is one of those things that both shouldn't matter (when looking
at it in a principledness way - that is, Whatever is best for the
patrons! No matter
what!) but also does matter (in a practical way - that is, OMG we are
all so busy being awesome).
But part of me, when looking at other people's guides and my own,
wonders if three columns isn't just a little TOO much for the user.
How is one supposed to scan the page? What's the prioritized
information? For a couple years now I've been eschewing three columns
whenever possible. Do others agree that three columns can be info
overload?
Brad
On Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 4:32 PM, Benjamin Florin
benjamin.flo...@gmail.com
wrote:
We've been tinkering with our LibGuides template in preparation for
an eventual redesign of our site and guides, e.g.:
http://libguides.bc.edu/libraries/babst/staff
Some of our guide authors weren't happy with the LibGuides
side-navigation's single-column limitation, so we made our own
template, moved {{guide_nav}} off to a left column, and wrote our
own styles to
make
the default top-nav display as left-nav. We've found that a 50/50 or
75/25
split next to the left nav looks pretty good.
Unfortunately we have authors who want *three* columns plus left-nav...
In general the LibGuides templating has felt modern and easy to work
with.
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
Hey everyone! Not to turn C4L into Support4LibGuides, but... :) The infrastructure for all the APIs is in place; currently, the Guides API and the Subjects API are functioning. Go to Tools API Get Guides to see the general structure of the URL. Replace guides with subjects to retrieve your subjects. You will need your LibGuides site ID, which you can get from the LibApps Dashboard screen. Word is that it will not take long to add other API calls on the back end; if you need these now, please do email supp...@springshare.com and reference this conversation. As for v1, we are planning on supporting it for 2 more years--that said, we would never leave anyone hanging, so if it takes longer than that to get everyone moved over, we're ready for that. Best, -Cindi On Wed, Sep 17, 2014 at 10:46 AM, Nadaleen F Tempelman-Kluit n...@nyu.edu wrote: Hi all- While we're on the topic of LibGuides V2, when will the GET subjects API (and other API details) be in place? We're in a holding pattern until we get those details and we've not been able to get any timeline as to when those assets will be in place. So we're deciding between building out LibGuides CMS Global landing pages using the V1 platform, or waiting until some future date which, very soon, will mean abandoning this project till next summer. If we go the former route, it would also be great to know how long V1 will be supported. Thanks On Wed, Sep 17, 2014 at 10:29 AM, Cindi Blyberg cindi...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 7:15 PM, Michael Schofield mschofi...@nova.edu wrote: Q1. How complicated is it to change all 3 column guides to a single-column left/right-nav layout? A little. You can force the entire group [or all groups] to use a single template, which is a huge time saver, except your guides' middle and right columns will be in hidden columns rather than forced to collapse into a single column. This was pretty confusing at first. We were afraid we actually lost content during the migration. You will need to manually hit every guide and change the layout to single-column, but that's just a click of the button. If you have 400+ guides, though, that's 400+ clicks. Alas, yes. Once we realized this was happening, our devs hashed it out and will be rolling out a fix to the migration script so that this won't happen again. Q2. Three-columns or single column? Single column. Users scan, and they scan the top and left-most portions of the screen. Anything in the middle and to the right is lost. Also, three columns on a responsive site is a little weird, because content is pretty squishy; on tablets you might have pretty narrow left and right columns. Actually, when you view a 3-column layout on a smaller screen, it scales down to a single column. If you're seeing otherwise, can you send us some examples in case this is a bug we need to fix? Thanks. :) The key here, of course, is to have the most important information in the left-hand column, and not to have too many boxes on a single page. Q5. Has anyone split the main content column into two smaller columns? LG2 makes it crazy easy to change number and percentage-based widths of the columns. So you could still use the tabs-across-the-top template and create a little 33% wide left sidebar column and a 66% wide right main column. One slight caution here: if you add a second content column to a side-nav layout and the guide author wants to display nav pills for the page's boxes, only the boxes from the first content column will be displayed as pills. This is by design, but we've filed it as a known issue. -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Blake Galbreath Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 2014 6:37 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav I have always thought that left-nav was the UX standard for left-to-right languages (as opposed to Arabic, eg.: http://www.france24.com/ar/). Personally, I feel that right-nav makes more sense across the board, due to the fact that it is less distance to travel for right-handed people. But the convention seems pretty set in stone. I am also not sure how screen readers deal with right-nav - although i am guessing that there is no problem there programming wise. Blake On Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 3:24 PM, Brad Coffield bcoffield.libr...@gmail.com wrote: Benjamin: Unfortunately we have authors who want *three* columns plus left-nav... LOL Margaret: Love the floating nav on that page. It's exciting that we'll be able to leverage Bootstrap with our guides now. Moving the entire library website to libguides CMS is looking more and more promising. Some more thoughts: I'm no UX expert
Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav
Hey everyone! Just wanted to de-lurk and answer a couple of questions here. :) Templates are customizable, and those customizations apply to the entire page, not just to the content area, although Will's right that with regular LibGuides the entire system and all the guides have a single look feel. You can create groups of guides in the LibGuides CMS upgrade, and each group of guides can have its own look and feel. There are actually templates not only for guide pages, but for the system homepage, the A-Z databases page, and other public pages. LibGuides 2 is based on Bootstrap 3, which you can choose to not apply if you like. Something else this group might be interested in is the RESTful API offered by LibGuides 2 CMS. For Margaret, here are a few systems that have come to our attention in recent weeks. If you'd like more examples, you can see most of the 623 live LibGuides 2 sites by exploring the LibGuides Community at libguides.com--just choose LibGuides v2 from the Product menu. http://libguides.gvsu.edu/ http://thegordon.libguides.com/library http://libguides.ashland.edu/ http://furman.beta.libguides.com/wexler/home http://libguides.usask.ca/ http://guides.library.georgetown.edu/researchcourseguides Hope this helps! Happy to answer questions. Cheers, -Cindi -- Cindi Trainor Blyberg (who works for Springshare) :D On Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 3:47 PM, Heller, Margaret mhell...@luc.edu wrote: We didn't modify the templates much, but I did do a few things with them to make them feel like our own, plus experiment with some ideas for the main library website which is due for a slight update. Here's an example of a guide: http://libguides.luc.edu/anthropology1. The major thing I changed was to modify the header to exactly mirror the university website main header. This is different from the library website, which I did on purpose. I also had hoped to move to left nav to mirror other sites on the university and library site, but everyone wanted to stick with tab navigation. As an attempt to aid navigation and mirror the university's use of tabs, I used a built-in Bootstrap function to float the tabs above the content after scrolling down past them. I set a few media queries so this doesn't happen on a phone size, as well as modifying a few other elements for tablet and phone size. I accomplished most of what I wanted to do with CSS (s much display:none for things I didn't like...) and changing the header, only had to modify a few items in the template itself. Mostly this was adding in new divs I needed for styling and so on. I didn't modify the structure of the columns at all. If you have the higher end version (LibGuides CMS I ! think) you have a lot more options for templates, though I still don't think this would address Will's issue. As a side note, I am working on a piece for ACRL TechConnect on this topic right now and looking for examples, so if anyone would be interested in featuring their guides in that, please get in touch with me. Best, Margaret Heller Digital Services Librarian Loyola University Chicago 773-508-2686 -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Will Martin Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 2014 2:14 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LibGuides v2 - Templates and Nav My impression of the LibGuides v2 template system is that it's decent within strict boundaries. We just launched LibGuides v2 about 6 weeks ago. We took a look at the templates, and opted not to do anything with them, because they didn't do what we needed them to. Our instance of LibGuides is shared between the main campus library and the health sciences library. Students navigating the system are often confused if they accidentally wind up looking at a guide produced for the other set of patrons. So the one thing we really wanted to do was customize the header of a guide based on whether it was produced at the health sciences library or at the main campus library, to hopefully help students keep track of where they are. Unfortunately, LibGuides' template system can't do that. It only applies to the content areas of the guide. Within that area, it affords a great degree of flexibility as regards the HTML markup of the guides. Outside of that area, it's useless. So we're running with the defaults. I may revisit those at some point, but for now we're reasonably happy with them. Oh, and here's a link to the documentation for the template system: http://support.springshare.com/libguides/guidetemplates/intro It does require you to be logged into your LibApps account, because apparently the details of their templating system is a deep, dark secret. Will On 2014-09-16 10:48, Graham, Jeannie wrote: Our library is also just getting ready to delve into LibGuides v2 so I'm also interested in hearing what others are doing! Thank you, -- Jeannie
