Recommendations Without Results: What We Learned About Our Organization Through Subject Guide Usability Studies

Many academic librarians spend significant time creating curated lists of databases, library materials, and other resources relevant to a discipline, often called subject guides. This case study examines the experience of a small team of librarians who conducted usability studies on James Madison University Libraries’ subject guides. We identified areas where our guides needed improvement and provided a list of recommendations to our liaison colleagues. While two of our key recommendations were adopted, others languished because we misconstrued our ability to initiate change beyond our small project team. Specifically, we underestimated how the absence of a content strategy for our subject guides and a lack of clear authority for creating or enforcing one would hinder our efforts. Other libraries might be able to learn from our experiences, especially from the mistakes we made.