Review of Pymble Ladies College’s LibGuide

I was hoping to find an example of an Australian primary school library on LibGuides. Most of the libraries I found were private secondary schools, I suppose because most (if not all) NSW government primary schools use the Oliver System which gives similar functionality through the school portal.

I found Pymble Ladies College at http://pymblelc.libguides.com/condelibrary. The site has a lot of interesting features. There are many suggestion lists, relating to genres, authors and specific titles. There are feeds that show what others are reading. I was pleased to see links from the home page to other libraries, such as NLA, SLNSW and various public libraries in the local area. There are also subject and other specialty pages. I investigated the Year 6 set of pages as I was particularly interested in how this was being used at the primary level.

The home page for the Year 6 classes could have been utilised more effectively as it was completely blank. It merely provided access to the various Year 6 class tabs and the static sidebar options of “Quick Links” to the library catalogue, database and eBook catalogues and “About the Library” with basic contact and opening hours information. Two separate teachers had linked to a Year 6 Book recommendation pamphlet which I believe would have made a good home page display.

The various class tabs reflected a range of curation ideas. At least one teacher had nothing on the class page. Several had book recommendations with cover displays, reviews and links to the catalogue. Several teachers also had class-created content, such as review quotes, library search tips or class survey results linked to their class page.

I can see from my limited exploration of the main library site and more detailed exploration of the Year 6 sub-pages that LibGuides has a lot of potential as a curation site. It provides a way to share crowd-sourced and interest-based recommendation information and patron-created content as well as providing direct links to the library catalogue for accessibility – all key factors for a 21st century information management platform.

As a selection aid resource for external TLs there are limitations as some features require password access.

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