Build better LibGuides: A dataset of Political Science, Public Affairs, and International Studies LibGuides

The dataset that accompanies the "Build Better LibGuides" chapter of Teaching Information Literacy in Political Science, Public Affairs, and International Studies. This dataset was created to compare current practices in Political Science, Public Affairs, and International Studies (PSPAIS) LibGuides with recommended best practices using a sample that represents a variety of academic institutions. Members of the ACRL Politics, Policy, and International Relations Section (PPIRS) were identified as the librarians most likely to be actively engaged with these specific subjects, so the dataset was scoped by identifying the institutions associated with the most active PPIRS members and then locating the LibGuides in these and related disciplines. The resulting dataset includes 101 guides at 46 institutions, for a total of 887 LibGuide tabs.

Methods
This dataset was created to compare current practices in Political Science, Public Affairs, and International Studies (PSPAIS) LibGuides with recommended best practices using a sample that represents a variety of academic institutions. Members of the ACRL Politics, Policy, and International Relations Section (PPIRS) were identified as the librarians most likely to be actively engaged with these specific subjects, so the dataset was scoped by identifying the institutions associated with the most active PPIRS members and then locating the LibGuides in these and related disciplines. Specifically, a student assistant collected the names and institutional affiliations of each member serving on a PPIRS committee as of July 1, 2021, 2022, and 2023. The student then removed the individual librarian names from the list and located the links to the Political Science or Government; Public Policy, Public Affairs, or Public Administration; and International Studies or International Relations LibGuides at each institution. The chapter author then confirmed and, in a few cases, added to the student's work and copied and pasted the tab names from each guide (which conveniently were also hyperlinked) into a Google Sheet. The resulting dataset included 101 guides at 46 institutions, for a total of 887 LibGuide tabs. A Google Apps script was used to extract the hyperlinks from the collected tab names and then a Python script was used to scrape the names of links included on each of the tabs. LibGuides from two institutions returned errors during the link name scraping process and were excluded in this part of the analysis.