Libguides is an application traditionally used for creating research guides in an electronic format. However, its functionalility allows users to go beyond the creation of traditional research guides and to personalize guides for individual faculty and individual courses. At Lincoln Memorial University, we are looking to use Libguides in two uniques ways: (1) to build electronic casebooks and supplement for individual courses; and (2) to organize guides as homepages for faculty, where links for the research and information sources (databases, blogs, RSS feeds and other electronic sources of information) they use on a regular basis are aggregated into one place. . This creates a one-stop shopping source of electronic information customized to the individual in contrast to a research guide which is geared toward a general audience in a particular subject area.
Additionally, as part of legal research instruction, we are aiming to use Libguides as the platform for our course readings & assignments. We're trying to break free from traditional texts for legal research and plan to integrate various electronic resources through Libguides instead. Thus, we may link to articles on Hein that discuss statutory interpretation, Westlaw tutorials on finding legislative histories, CALI lessons on legal research, class captures form prior classes, etc.
Moreover, this has the potential to work exceptionally well for doctrinal classes as you can create an electronic casebook just by linking to contents available through commercial databases that students to which students have access anyway. In theory, it lowers costs to students and makes courses more customizable to the individual professor.
None of this is without hurdles, but we think it is a step in the right direction on a platform with great useability.
