What research guide platforms are there beyond libguides?

Question

Libguides appears to be the clear favorite among academic libraries. I find that libguides encourages building complex, unfocused, and unattractive research guides. What alternatives are in production use?

Answer 1

I wrote to a listserv about this a little awhile ago. Here's my rundown:

There are a few open source alternatives to LibGuides:

SubjectsPlus: http://www.subjectsplus.com/

Library A La Carte: http://alacarte.library.oregonstate.edu/

LibData: http://libdata.sourceforge.net/ (this one looks a little dated, would recommend looking at the two above before it).

Then you could also build your own subject guide site using a CMS like Drupal or Wordpress with some taxonomy thrown in. There's a Code4Lib article that demonstrates how to do this with Wordpress, for instance. While that article is pretty advanced, setting up a blog (even a hosted one on wordpress.com) and using tags or categories for subjects isn't too tough.

The listserv question was more specific--what open source LibGuides alternatives exist--but it answers this question well, too.

Answer 2

There's Library à la Carte, an open source system built on Ruby on Rails.

Answer 3

Don't give in to the pressure to create the "complex, unfocused, and unattractive research guides" of which you have seen. Dial it back a notch and put in the guide only what you think needs to go in the guide. In my opinion, LibGuides should contain the essential information you want to provide. Sadly, some treat LibGuides as a bucket and toss everything they can in it. The look of the guide is on you. Make good choices.

Answer 4

The platform will also depend on what you want to do with your guides. Choosing a system for guides is a great excuse to evaluate the purpose for guides themselves and change things up, especially if you have an existing set of resource guides that's withering on the vine. For example, if you're at an academic library and decide to forsake subject guides and only create course guides, you may end up choosing a non-guide-specific CMS that will integrate most easily with your campus' learning management system.

Answer 5

While the alternatives I know of are already in the answers above this one, another option is to maximize the current product and your already-created content...

Mini-reference interview:

• Is there a consistent design or wrapper for the rest of the library website at YPOW?
• How much control of design and layout do you (and your colleagues) have in YPOW's LibGuides system?
• Was there a conscious decision to allow free-rein (assuming there is free-rein) in the LibGuides design and layout?

Roll your own options and LibGuides allow for custom site, branding, and layout management tailored to the answers of these questions.

Having done the build your own guides (hand coded and cms) and then switched to LibGuides (and now pulling together a book on how to do LibGuides right), LibGuides has been much easier for MPOW and has been very easy (for me) to manage and very easy (for my colleagues) to create and maintain their own content in a managed wrapper.

Selection of a management system for course or subject guides is different for for each library. I encourage you (and YPOW) to revisit the goals you had in mind for them and make conscious choices about what information you want to convey and the time and skill levels you have available.