Background & Rationale
Since its implementation, LibGuides has grown to include close to 1,000 guides and 100 author accounts. In order to improve the experience of LibGuides users and make the platform easier to maintain, it is necessary to develop a policy to guide the regular weeding of content that is no longer useful or necessary. As with other library collections, research guides should be periodically reviewed and weeded on the basis of accuracy, timeliness, relevance, usage, and uniqueness. Offering a large, uncurated collection of content makes it more difficult for users to navigate the system and find the information they are looking for. Furthermore, providing content that is stale, inaccurate, or outdated diminishes the perceived quality, authority, and trustworthiness of the Libraries. By reducing the amount of content within LibGuides, the Libraries can conserve the limited resources it spends maintaining low quality content and redirect them toward creating and improving content that our users actually find useful.
Weeding Criteria
Authors should review their content regularly and consider deleting any guides that:
Have not been updated in the previous 12 months
Information is volatile. Web pages move or disappear. Policies and procedures change. New resources are acquired. Old resources are deaccessioned. Guides that are not regularly updated are likely to contain information that is stale, inaccurate, or outdated. These inaccuracies reduce the value of your guide and diminish the reputation of the Libraries as a source of authoritative, high-quality information. Authors should review any guides that haven’t been updated in the last 12 months and consider updating them. If you choose not to update (adding a punctuation mark is not an “update”), then the guide should be deleted, or at least unpublished. Published guides that have not been updated in more than 24 months will be considered orphaned and automatically unpublished by the administrator at the beginning of each academic year.
Do not support the needs of users
LibGuides is intended to support the research, teaching, and learning needs of the Rutgers community and further the mission of the Libraries. All content should fall into one of the four categories that define the scope of LibGuides and include: a) research guides, b) course guides, c) how-to guides, or d) staff guides.[1] Any content that does not fall within one of these categories should be considered for deletion.
Content that is created to achieve short-term goals or serve a temporary audience should also be weeded. For example, a guide that was created for a course that is no longer offered or a program that is no longer active should be considered for deletion. Authors should review their course guides every semester and unpublish any course guides that will not be used the following semester.
Receive low or minimal usage
Guides are only valuable insofar as they are used. Guides with low or minimal usage should be considered for deletion or revision. Of course, usage is relative to the size of the guide’s intended audience. For example, a subject guide typically has a much wider audience than a course guide. Use your judgment when evaluating usage, but consider weeding any guide where the total number of visits per year is less than 20% of its estimated target audience.
Duplicate information that is presented elsewhere
LibGuides is intended to supplement, not duplicate, information found on the library’s website. Redundancy of content produces not only in wasted effort among librarians but also confusion among users. Consider deleting any guides that mostly duplicate information that is already found on the library’s website. If your guide is intended to supplement information on the website, be sure to work with the web team to have your guide cross-referenced with the relevant page on the website.
Compliance
Compliance with this policy is mandatory for all LibGuide authors. For questions regarding this policy, please contact the LibGuides administrator .
Approved by the LibGuides Working Group 6/26/2014
[1] In the absence of an accessible staff intranet, the LibGuides Working Group recognizes the distribution of internal staff information as a valid use of the LibGuides platform.