Penn State University Libraries - About ANGEL Library Subject Guides

About the project

The purpose of the Library Subject Guides in ANGEL is to provide students with easy access to information resources targeted to a specific class. As more faculty, and therefore students, use ANGEL, many students will essentially be using it as their "portal" to Penn State information. Students will come to expect to find appropriate library resources linked under their "Resources" tab in all of their ANGEL courses. Even in ANGEL courses without library instruction sessions, students will have guidance on appropriate library resources, so they can explore topics independently. Of course librarians should collaborate with faculty in their courses the best way they see fit, and this may include alternatives to the Library Subject Guides.

Students will see the Library Subject Guides and Course Reserves under their "Resources" tab once they are in the course. See the ANGEL Courseware And Reserves page for information on the Reserves tool.

Customized guides

Guides for an individual course may be created at your own discretion, or it may be requested by a faculty member through the "request a customized library subject guide" link. These requests will come to a special email account and will be distributed to the appropriate librarian in the appropriate location. Also, when you get a request from a faculty member to teach a session for his/her course, ask "are you using ANGEL?" If the response is "yes," then it is probably appropriate to create a Guide for the course in ANGEL and attach it to the course. Essentially this is what we always did in the past (create a guide for the students in the class), but the difference is now it is connected directly to their course in ANGEL so students don't have to find the guide somewhere on the library pages.

Department level guides

The goal is to have a guide for each major or department. All courses in Agriculture, Criminal Justice, Business, Engineering, or other subject area can be linked to the same guide in one process.

How do I get authorized to make guides?

You need to have Librarian status to create or link guides to other courses. Get authorized for librarian status by contacting Helen Smith (hfs1@psu.edu). Once authorized as a librarian, the subject guide tool will appear on the ANGEL homepage after login. Librarian status is in addition to the regular faculty status that allows you to create an ANGEL course.

History of the project

The Library ANGEL initiative began with the concept of bringing appropriate library resources to the students where they needed it- within the structure of their online courses. Because ANGEL, the course management system adopted by Penn State, was developed by Indiana University and is now a product of a small company called Cyber Learning Labs, we had access to the code, and therefore could develop modules within the system itself. The University Libraries, in partnership with ITS units AIS, TLT and DLT, collaborated on a project to deliver library resources to students within the context of their courses.