If you are too young or have lived under a rock and don’t remember the Matrix series of movies, then you won’t know what the title of this post references. Here is a bit of background on it.
In the very first Matrix movie, Trinity and Neo are readying for battle to save Morpheus from the evil-ness hands of Smith and his agents. They need to fly a helicopter outside of the building he is being help captive in. The plan was for Neo to go in the building to get Morpheus out while Trinity flew the helicopter close to the floor to rescue them and return back to their ship, the Nebuchadnezzar.
So, what does all of this have to do with libraries, knowledge and LibGuides? Back to the movie reference for a second. As Neo and Trinity are planning this great escape, Neo asks Trinity, “do you know how to fly this kind of helicopter?” She says “Nope” and then says, “Tank load me up!” Tank then obediently uploads the information to Trinity who has her eyes closed and lids fluttering.
When she opens her eyes, she is set with the knowledge she needs and ready for the fight. Now, let’s go back to libraries, knowledge and LibGuides. Libguides are the Tanks…they house the knowledge that you can “load up” on to prepare you for whatever battle you need.
What are LibGuides? Quick answer is that they are everywhere on the Internet. Specifically, LibGuides are like cheat sheets, created by librarians. Remember, “Crib notes”…those little yellow and black, down and dirty guide books (about 5″ x 8”) on Shakespearean plays, AP Algebra, Advanced Calculus, etc. There were Crib Notes for practically every subject. Well, LibGuides are the same way. There are LibGuides created for every subjects. Librarians, primarily working in academic libraries (since most schools have LibGuides accounts https://community.libguides.com/) spend most of their days creating these little gems.
Where do you find Libguides? We can consider the collection of LibGuides as a large digital collection. As of this writing, the LibGuide Community states that there are 918,253 guides out there. Since this digital collection is Web-based, you can always search for them in Google, like anything else. Simply, put your topic into Google followed by the word libguide. I just did this with ChatGPT.
So, if you need to learn a topic as quickly as possible, allow a LibGuide to load you up! It is the best way to tap a librarian, aka knowledge expert’s brain. LibGuides are also excellent ways to learn about entire fields where you need to break down your learning into the important topics.
Resources
About LibGuides – SpringShare company website – https://springshare.com/libguides/
LibGuide Community – https://community.libguides.com/
HEATH Information 