SubjectsPlus is a free and open source tool (created at Ithaca College Library in the USA) that enables libraries to create and manage online research guides. Usually created by subject librarians (and therefore requiring no specialist technical skill), these guides can take many forms, with the software sufficiently flexible to allow many different ways of presenting the guides and enabling users to access them (for example, users may want to navigate by subject, by course, by database or by the type of information they seek). 

You can successfully complete installation without any knowledge of MySQL, but if you do have some knowledge you can make additional changes to the look and feel of the SubjectsPlus interface. In addition, the subject guides can be created by librarians with no technical knowledge, since much of the operation is via WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editors. Subject librarians can therefore truly 'own' their subject domain and use SubjectsPlus to 'market' the most interesting items available to ensure maximal usage of the e-resources they have available.

EIFL-FOSS has developed a Step-By-Step Guide to installing, configuring, implementing and using SubjectsPlus, designed especially for EIFL member libraries by Amos Kujenga of NUST, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe.

Community of Practice website

EIFL-FOSS has also created a Community of Practice website for anyone in the EIFL community who is interested in SubjectsPlus to join and discuss their challenges and issues. If you are interested in SubjectsPlus, whether or not you are actually using it yet, please join the community and ask questions and create discussions - the site is yours and we would like you to use it as much as possible. To join the EIFL FOSS SubjectsPlus Workspace Community please click here.