In this book chapter and case study, the authors tell the story of how they created and sustained the Binghamton University Libraries' Anti-Racism and Resource Guide. They discuss how they first came together on this project to develop their vision of the guide and how they were able to evolve and adapt the project over time so that it remains updated, relevant, and sustainable. They also highlight the extremely collaborative nature of their work in this guide, and reflect on how bringing together their varied voices to collectively develop a resource on the topic of anti-racism led to the creation of an extremely unique and dynamic guide.
TopLiterature Review
Libguides is a content management system created by the company Springshare in 2007 and is frequently used by libraries to create digital guides that provide information, resources, links, and research help on a variety of topics (“Libguides”, n.d.). These guides can vary widely in scope and purpose, but in the academic library field, the Libguides tool is often used by librarians to create curated guides that provide resources and research help specific in certain subject areas, courses, or assignments (Bergstrom-Lynch, 2019).
Libguides have become ubiquitous in the field of librarianship over the past fifteen years. Springshare currently states that they are used by 6,100 libraries and 130,000 librarians across 82 countries as of February 2023 (“Libguides”, n.d.), and this has led to the publication of countless research articles, usability studies, and opinion pieces focused on how to best utilize the software tool to meet user needs, particularly in the areas of guide design, resource curation, and organizational structure (Neuhaus et al., 2021). Several usability studies that evaluate Libguide designs, for instance, have found that participants more often preferred side-navigation menus over top-level horizontal navigation menus (Ouellette, 2011; Thorngate & Hoden, 2017; Barker & Hoffman, 2021), were often distracted or turned-off by big blocks of text and cluttered-looking guide pages (Stonsteby & DeJonghe, 2013; Barker & Hoffman, 2021), and were most drawn to minimalist guides that required less scrolling and fewer tabs to navigate (Conerton & Goldenstein, 2017; Barker & Hoffman, 2021). Some user studies have also sought to determine the most effective methods of content organization. Both Lee & Lowe (2018) and Barker & Hoffman (2021) found that students seemed to prefer pedagogical-style guides (i.e. guides organized by research processes and learning outcomes) over more traditional “pathfinder” guides (i.e. guides organized by resource type).
However, despite the abundance of studies that address Libguide design, usage, and organization in a general sense, there is a significant lack of literature that examines the use of Libguides to create social justice and anti-racist resource guides. One of the few articles that have been published on the topic is Twanna Hodge’s (2020) “Using LibGuides to support racial justice & create inclusive communities,” in Springshare’s online newsletter SpringyNews. In this article, Hodge provided valuable guidance, tips, and examples of how libraries can create high-quality social justice-oriented resource guides. Hodge’s recommendations were then used to help create a rubric in Piper, Ameen, and Lowe’s (2021) groundbreaking study, in which the authors evaluated 66 anti-Black racism libguides that met their criteria from 61 ARL institutions. After evaluating the libguides, their findings indicated that guides scored higher in areas of design and resource suggestions, but were significantly lacking in two content areas: “Framing of Social Justice” and “Pedagogy” (Piper et al., 2021). They determined that guides were more likely to omit definitions of key social justice terms, solidarity statements, and contextual information that engaged more directly with social justice theory and learning goals for the guide (Piper et al., 2021).