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A New Approach to Reference Guides

In late 2005 staff at the National Library began to rethink the way it provided access to online information in response to our users’ need for simple, user-friendly access to online resources. This new approach resulted in the development of a new resource discovery tool, E-Resources, to replace the existing Indexes and Databases service. E-Resources provides a simple access point to the Library’s online reference resources, including websites, e-journals, e-books, newspapers, indexes and full-text databases.

E-Resources makes it easy to locate an online resource by a keyword search, or browse by subject. However, the Library recognised many of our users would require further assistance to locate all available information on a subject and make the best use of our collections. To fulfil this need the Library’s existing guides were analysed and a project planned to redesign them into a more useful format. The main aim of the resultant Guides Redevelopment Project was to integrate the Library’s subject guides into E-Resources to provide a one-stop shop for subject-based online resources, while pointing, where necessary, to useful resources in other formats such as print or microform.

Prior to the introduction of E-Resources and the guides’ redevelopment, there were two main types of guides available through the Guides page on the National Library website:

  • Internet guides—which contained selected free websites
  • Discover guides—which consisted of catalogue search tips, a select listing of useful print materials and links to electronic resources in Indexes and Databases

Indexes and Databases, as the Library’s access point for online information, included links to the Internet guides and had individual entries to many of the free websites listed on those guides. Consequently, there were points at which these two subject listings (the Guides page and Indexes and Databases) overlapped and the pathways to information were often confusing for clients.

When replacing Indexes and Databases with E-Resources, an important objective was to integrate the guides into E-Resources so readers would be able to find all relevant items with one subject search.

This integrated approach was achieved by rationalising the content of the guides and concentrating on providing access to a small set of high quality resources. The number of links on the Internet guides was heavily reduced to remove long lists of links to minor websites, sites with little real content, or to numerous lower level pages of the same website. With improved website design and users’ growing proficiency in the use of search engines, sites that could be easily found by a popular search engine were deleted from the guide. At the same time, librarians have added value to the guides by including descriptions and keywords with the links to useful websites on a particular subject.

To integrate this information into E-Resources, each Internet guide now has its own individual entry in E-Resources, along with other key free websites and indexing or full-text databases, thus bringing together all of the Library’s selected online resources in an interface that is easy to search by keyword or browse by subject.

The Discover guides have become aids to finding print materials, with sections that referred readers to electronic format items being deleted. No content was lost in this process: all otherwise unlisted electronic resources were added as individual entries in E-Resources. Users are presented with these Discover guides at the top of their search result pages in E-Resources. This approach brings together print and electronic materials by subject, which improves usability for the Library’s users, as an increasing number of electronic resources replace traditional print reference works.

E-Resources screen
Search for ‘Literature’ produces two guides above the main set of results

There are now two types of guides listed both on the Guides page and searchable in E-Resources:

  • Print Resources at the National Library of Australia guides—which replace the old Discover guides
  • Selected Websites guides—which replace the Internet guides.

Plain, descriptive titles were adopted for the guides to alert users immediately to the nature of the content.

E-Resources screen
Australian Biography Print Resources guide

The integration of the subject guides into E-Resources has meant that readers are alerted to all the Library’s reference resources on a particular topic, regardless of format. For busy reference staff, there is now much less work needed to maintain the guides because there is less duplication of content.

This more streamlined, better integrated approach to subject-based guides is an important aspect of the Library’s unmediated reference services, which are increasingly designed to assist users—especially offsite users—to locate information for themselves.

Kathryn Boesen
Information Services