Three types of guides

 
Let’s define our content.
After surveying the current versions of our LibGuide materials we discovered that our guides might be trying to accomplish too much in their limited molds! For the most part, each guide is created by a different instructor or faculty member that has a specialty in the subject matter. The variety of authors has lead to the creation of many different looking research guides. However, amongst the diversity of guides, we’re starting to see that their functionality falls into three main groups: discipline guides, class guides, and task based guides.
Discipline based guides are meant to help students get started researching in a specific academic subject. They provide tailored lists of journals, articles, and databases that are relevant to the field. In addition they contain book recommendations and links to websites that are popular in the field. These guides are often general, and aim to serve as a survey for research subjects like Chemistry, English, History, etc.
Class based guides are linked to specific courses that are offered at the college. These guides contain more in depth resources on how to begin researching for assignments relevant to the course. These guides contain a diversity of content types, ranging from images, professional resources, directories of local resources, to links to relevant articles and publications. Class based guides contain the most variation from guide to guide because they are tailored to meet very specific research needs. Their aim is to dig deep, unlike the wide reaching discipline based guides.
Task based guides are designed to help students manage a executing a specific task such as citing sources, or using CUNY Academic Works. These guides have the most straightforward, non-negotiable information. They serve as information walkthroughs on how to do a very concrete action that has a clear proven result.
So what does this means? We need to identify the strengths of each guide based on what their intended goal is. In our search to understand best practices, we need to honor the differences in how we deliver information. What works well for a Discipline based guide won’t necessarily make sense for a Class based guide.