New Digital Technologies to Create Subject Guides

The most recent issue of the Electronic Journal of Academic and Special Librarianship features an article on Subject Guides: Putting a New Spin on an Old Concept:

"Given the advent of new Internet tools and the explosive growth of electronic resources available on the Web, the reference librarians at the University of Maryland (UM) College Park were facing many issues when keeping up with new technologies and creating subject guides that meet library users’ satisfaction. The goal of this paper was to explore the challenges librarians are facing and to identify new technologies to assist them in creating subject guides. The literature revealed a wide variety of librarians’ attitudes and practices in creating subject guides at various university libraries nationwide. A survey was conducted with UM librarians and subject guide users to determine user expectations of the UM subject guides. This paper will provide subject librarians with useful tools for creating subject guides in the electronic environment (...)"

"The main goal of this research was to investigate not only the challenges surrounding subject guides created by librarians at the University of Maryland and nationwide, but also to suggest useful tools for creating and maintaining subject guides using new electronic technologies. We reviewed the literature and randomly researched academic public libraries’ Web sites to identify other practices in creating subject guides. Meantime, a survey was conducted at the University of Maryland Libraries to determine user’s expectations and challenges librarians are facing in creating subject guides. This paper will illustrate the current trends for the creation of subject guides."

Among the technologies examined are wikis, social bookmarking, databases and server side includes.