Search DU CTLAT Blog

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Course Views [Library Tools] Project, North Carolina State University (NCSU) Libraries, Raleigh, N.C.

The NCSU Libraries implemented a cutting-edge service in response to the difficulty of creating and maintaining enough “course pages” – recommended resources for specific courses and assignments – to meet students’ needs. The Course Views system provides pages for all 6,000 courses offered by over 150 departments at NCSU. For more information: http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/dli/projects/courseviews.

Overview
The Library Course Views application (branded "Library Tools") dynamically generates student-centric views of library resources and tools for all courses taught at NCSU. Library content is contextualized to the course wherever possible by exploiting existing and new library resource mappings to NCSU course department codes or course numbers. Course Views provides a consolidated view of library offerings that is easily linked to from both library systems and non-library systems such as campus learning management systems.

Team
•Kim Duckett, Research & Information Services.
•Tito Sierra, Digital Library Initiatives.
•Jason Casden, Digital Library Initiatives.
•Joseph Ryan, Digital Library Initiatives.
•Andreas Orphanides, NCSU Libraries Fellow.

Technical Details
Library Course Views is a styled set of "widgets," collected by "RESTful" requests to the Library Widget System, that provide entry-points to library resources and services from a course-centric perspective. These widgets can contain static or dynamic content that use the course identifier to leverage librarian-created knowledge to select content at various levels of customization. All of the widgets have been designed to be as scalable as possible, supporting various levels of manual customization while allowing for more general content when appropriate. This project is implemented using object-oriented PHP, and the front-end design makes use of YUI, jQuery and CSS. Library Course Views URIs are "RESTful" and intuitive, and the Library Course Views widgets are easily reusable in other contexts, such as Moodle.

Project Links
•Library Tools Course Selector - http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/course/eac/580/
•Course Views Usage Report - http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/dli/projects/dataviz/viscourseviews.html

Awards
ALA's Office of Information Technology Policy's Cutting-Edge Library Services 2009 award. This award is meant to "showcase libraries that are serving their communities with novel and innovative methods and provide the library community with some successful models for delivering quality library service in new ways."

Reports and Presentations
Casden, J., Duckett, K., Sierra, T., and Ryan, J. (2009). "Course Views: A Scalable Approach to Providing Course-Based Access to Library Resources", The Code4Lib Journal, Issue 6.

Sierra, T., Casden, J., and Duckett, K. (2008). "A Scalable Approach to Providing Course-based Access to Library Resources", Digital Library Federation Fall Forum 2008, Providence, Rhode Island, November 13, 2008.

Duckett, K. and Casden, J. (2008). "Scaling Up Library Resources for Students: Course Views at NCSU," part of the "Course Management Systems: Integration Library Content" series of presentations, 2008 LITA National Forum, Cincinnati, Ohio, October 17, 2008.

Duckett, K. and Sierra, T. (2007). "Course Views: A Scalable Project to Connect Students to Library Resources", EDUCAUSE 2007 Annual Meeting, Seattle, Washington, October 26, 2007.

Duckett, K. and Sierra, T. (2007). "Connecting Students to Library Resources through Course Views", poster presentation for EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative 2007 Annual Meeting, Atlanta, Georgia, January 23, 2007.


Share/Bookmark

No comments:

Post a Comment