Measuring Actual Practices: A Computational Analysis of LibGuides in Academic Libraries

Abstract

This study investigates organizational patterns from 12,781 subject guides at 114 academic institutions, comparing practices evident on LibGuides with stated best practices from the literature of library and information science. Data from subject guide fields such as titles, tabs, and boxes were collected systematically from disciplinary guides at institutions in the United States that are described in Carnegie Classifications as “R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity,” and then analyzed according to two general methods. First, descriptive statistics were generated for quantitative aspects of the LibGuides data (e.g., the average number of boxes used per guide), to map both normal and atypical organizational practices. Second, word and phrase frequencies from text fields were compiled to explore differences in how fields such as guide titles and descriptions are commonly utilized. The findings suggest that the average range of guides tends to follow best practices, but that in the use of certain guide elements, especially tabs, most guides do not follow recommended guidelines. In addition, the data identify a number of guides that represent extreme outliers to typical practices: a single guide contained 144 tabs, for example, while another subject guide landing page was found to include 2,033 links.

Keywords:

• LibGuides
• academic libraries
• subject guides
• quantitative analysis
• information organization
• term frequencies

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Kate McManus and Tiffany Carlson at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, for providing administrator access to the platform to assist with construction of LibGuides API queries.

Data availability

Derived data for this paper are available in the Data Repository for the University of Minnesota, https://doi.org/10.13020/AF1W-G563.

Notes

1 The term “librarian” is intended throughout to be inclusive of all library workers, regardless of job role. In practice, even as Springshare refers to LibGuide creators and editors as “librarians,” those responsible for guides at specific institutions range widely.

2 In cases where the institution was a medical school, such as University of Colorado Anschutz, the primary LibGuides instance captured may only reflect medical library content.

3 The LibGuides Community site tracks the number of guides, of any type, created by each author across the entire platform. The highest number of guides created by a single LibGuides user as of April 8, 2021, was 4,875 guides, the equivalent of creating one new guide every day for over 13 years. Fewer than 200 of these guides are available publicly, however, which makes it difficult to ascertain why or how the vast majority of the guides were created.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Cody Hennesy

Cody Hennesy, MLIS, is the Journalism & Digital Media Librarian at the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities, where he focuses on library services and support for text data mining research and other emerging literacies in the digital humanities and computational social sciences.

Annis Lee Adams

Annis Lee Adams, MLIS, MA is the E-Resources Librarian at California State University, East Bay. In addition to e-resources, her responsibilities include, reference, instruction, liaison, and Libguide work, with special emphasis on user experience.