Meeting Users Where They Are

Delivering Dynamic Content and Services through a Campus Portal

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.6017/ital.v39i1.11519

Abstract

Campus portals are one of the most visible and frequently used online spaces for students, offering one-stop access to key services for learning and academic self-management. This case study reports how instruction librarians at the University of Vermont collaborated with portal developers in the registrar’s office to develop high-impact, point-of-need content for a dedicated “Library” page. This content was then created in LibGuides and published using the Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) for LibGuides boxes. Initial usage data and analytics show that traffic to the libraries’ portal page has been substantially and consistently higher than expected. The next phase for the project will be the creation of customized library content that is responsive to the student’s user profile.

Author Biographies

Graham Sherriff, University of Vermont

Graham Sherriff is Instructional Design Librarian at the University of Vermont, where he administers the Libraries' tutorial platforms and has a lead role in tutorial design and development. He also provides leadership in the use of technologies for instruction and research, and supports UVM's College of Engineering & Mathematical Sciences.

Dan DeSanto, University of Vermont

Daniel DeSanto is an instruction librarian at the University of Vermont with liaison responsibilities in the College of Education and Social Services as well as Psychology and Philosophy. His areas of research interest include the intersections of writing and information literacy as well as faculty perceptions of scholarly impact.

Daisy Benson, University of Vermont

Daisy Benson is the Library Instruction Coordinator at the University of Vermont. Her research interests include information literacy for first-year students, the connection of information literacy and foundational composition, and pedagogy.

Gary S. Atwood, University of Vermont

Gary S. Atwood is the Health Sciences Education Librarian at the University of Vermont. His primary duties include coordinating Dana Medical Library’s education program, building and maintaining online learning objects, and developing new teaching programs. He provides research and instruction support to several departments in the College of Medicine and the Department of Nursing. 

References

Bruce Stoffel and Jim Cunningham, “Library Participation in Campus Web Portals: An Initial Survey,” Reference Services Review 33, no. 2 (June 1, 2005): 145-46, https://doi.org/10.1108/00907320510597354.

Ilka Datig, “Walking in Your Users’ Shoes: An Introduction to User Experience Research as a Tool for Developing User-Centered Libraries,” College & Undergraduate Libraries 22, nos. 3–4 (2015): 235–37, https://doi.org/10.1080/10691316.2015.1060143.

Mark Carden, “Library Portals and Enterprise Portals: Why Libraries Need to Be at the Centre of Enterprise Portal Projects,” Information Services & Use 24, no. 4 (2004): 172–73, https://doi.org/10.3233/ISU-2004-24402.

Scott Garrison, Anne Prestamo, and Juan Carlos Rodriguez, “Putting Library Discovery Where Users Are,” in Planning and Implementing Resource Discovery Tools in Academic Libraries, ed. Mary Pagliero Popp and Diane Dallis (Hershey, PA: Information Science Reference, 2012), 391, https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-4666-1821-3.ch022.

Steven J. Bell, “Staying True to the Core: Designing the Future Academic Library Experience,” portal: Libraries and the Academy 14, no. 3 (2014): 369–82. https://doi.org/10.1353/pla.2014.0021.

Tim McGeary, “MyLibrary: The Library’s Response to the Campus Portal,” Online Information Review 29, no. 4 (2005): 365–73, https://doi.org/10.1108/14684520510617811.

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Published

2020-03-16

How to Cite

Sherriff, G., DeSanto, D., Benson, D., & Atwood, G. S. (2020). Meeting Users Where They Are: Delivering Dynamic Content and Services through a Campus Portal. Information Technology and Libraries, 39(1). https://doi.org/10.6017/ital.v39i1.11519

Issue

Vol. 39 No. 1 (2020)

Section

Communications

License

Copyright (c) 2020 Graham Sherriff, Dan DeSanto, Daisy Benson, and Gary S. Atwood

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

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