Leveraging Interactive Maps as a Resource Discovery Tool: Envisioning a Repository, Collection or Series with a Map-driven Interface

Leveraging Interactive Maps as a Resource Discovery Tool: Envisioning a Repository, Collection or Series with a Map-driven Interface

Those of us with Digital Commons sites may already have download based live-maps embedded on one or more landing pages of our collections. What if we created a map for end-users to search our series in new ways? In this sandbox, two members of the LSRD-SIS executive board come together to share a show-and-tell-style tour of 3 map-based interfaces for a variety of legal resources, from in-house developed examples to a larger database provider like HeinOnline. Through these examples, we hope attendees will engage in brainstorming ways we could creatively integrate maps to leverage them as a more user-centered discovery tool for our organization’s own legal repository collections. We want these examples help repository administrators and librarians to collectively contemplate how transferrable and logistically plausible it would be to design similar UX experiences that work with our repositories; pivoting from a map displaying live-downloads of what others have found to a version of this style search tool that lets site visitors use the map to explore our collections in new ways. This short informal paper introduces the three primary examples for discussion:

1. Local Nebraska Laws Map - LibGuides backend, public user focused

2. "Call All Papers" Map - Drupal backend, faculty user focused

3. State Constitution's Illustrated - HeinOnline resources we are all familiar with