My library will be implementing LibGuides over the next few months and I will chart our progress here. I will have to explain why we chose LibGuides and our goals for the guides at a later date. What I want to talk about now is branding.

LibGuides does a great job of letting a library brand their page. Of course, LibGuides is set up on this premise were they are providing libraries a service that the libraries use to serve their patrons. I think that database vendors could take a lesson from them. Often on commercial or society database products the ability to place the library brand on the page is non-existent or very small. I repeatedly hear librarians clamor for more branding. This isn't just a quest for information dominance (ok, maybe a little) but the problem of "everything is free on the Internet" is easy to propogate in this way. If a patron find an article through Google Scholar, clicks, and voila - instant article! They have no way of knowing that there is a cost associated with the product as well as hours of licensing negotiation on their behalf. Now I realize that the publishers have a brand they want to get out there too - however, the libraries are sometimes their only advocates when funding time comes, not the end-user.

Regardless, I'm impressed so far with how much I can make my LibGuides page feel like my library website. Hopefully this translates into value-added by the library. In the future as we try to be "where the patrons are" more and become ubiquitous the problem arises: how to be valuable when you are (rightfully) invisible.

Labels: branding, LibGuides