Using a proposed library guide assessment standards rubric and a peer review process to pedagogically improve library guides: A case study

Library guides can help librarians provide information to their patrons regarding their library resources, services, and tools. Despite their perceived usefulness, there is little discussion in designing library guides pedagogically by following a set of assessment standards for a quality-checked review. Instructional designers regularly use vetted assessment standards and a peer review process for building high-quality courses, yet librarians typically do not when designing library guides. This article explores using a set of standards remixed from SUNY’s Online Course Quality Review Rubric or OSCQR and a peer review process. The authors used a case study approach to test the effectiveness of building library guides with the proposed standards by tasking college students to assess two Fake News guides (one revised to meet the proposed standards). Results indicated most students preferred the revised library guide to the original guide for personal use. The majority valued the revised guide for integrating into a learning management system and perceived it to be more beneficial for professors to teach from. Future studies should replicate this study and include additional perspectives from faculty and how they perceive the pedagogical values of a library guide designed following the proposed rubric.