Managing resource lists will require a bit of teamwork…
All the subject librarians like to give their users lists of the most relevant resources. This is a “good thing“. But with huge numbers of resources spread across many different lists, keeping them all up-to-date is difficult – quickly leading to broken and outdated links. This is a “bad thing“.
I had been working on a system where we could manage our lists of resources centrally for some time – but sorting out the web chat service last summer rather got in the way of completing that project. Luckily, LibGuides makes this idea of centrally managing resources a doddle. All we need to do is to work out the specifics of how we’ll implement the system, and to what extend we’ll centralise the resource link management.
At the moment our general approach to this kind of thing is reasonably devolved. Whilst we have a central A-Z list of resources, this is entirely separate to the lists included in each subject page. If a link on the central A-Z list is updated, the change is not automatically cascaded to any of the subject lists it features on. I don’t think anyone would be against automating that process.
The point of debate will revolve around the non-core resources – those that are associated with one or two subjects and which do not feature on the central A-Z list. Do we leave those to the individual subject librarians to manage themselves, or do we centralise everything? And which types of resource should be included, and which should not?
Personally, I’m in favour of moving towards the centralisation model, with as many resources as possible handled centrally – and then made available for reuse by as many subject guides as possible. Yes, it will mean a little more bureaucracy – but I’m working on a couple of tools that should take most of the pain out of that – and I think the benefits of better link management will outweigh the costs of the small amount of extra work.
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