Skip to Main Content

LibGuides Best Practices

Steps to take to bring guides into new standards

Based on the results of usability testing conducted in early 2012, the usability team is recommending certain changes be adopted throughout LibGuides. The recommendations are as follows:

  1. Read the other sections of this guide first, especially the usability and style section. Look at the model guides of Art and Business and History 371.
  2. Rename your tabs to be more consistent with other guides. Every guide should start with a "welcome" tab (see step 4) followed by a Database Articles tab. Books & Films, Encyclopedias, News Sources, and APA (or MLA) Style are the other recommended tabs - and in that order. You may find you need additional tabs: if so, place those tabs before the style tab, which should be on the far right. The style tab should be the name of the predominant style for the discipline: Chicago Style, MLA Style, etc. If no style predominates, add two tabs.
  3. Streamline your profile and make it consistant with others. (See other tab in this guide).
  4. Add a welcome tab/page with an index in a table. You can copy the one from the template page as long as you change the text and the URLs. To copy the welcome page on the template, click "add page" to reuse the welcome page in the template, but then click the "copy" box.
  5. Make sure the home tab has an image that describes the subject, with the name of the subject right underneath it. Jennifer can provide one for you with the text underneath, or use the box to the left as a guide.
  6. Pare down your guide to the essentials. Try to reduce the number of tabs, boxes, and descriptive text. Don't list every resource and don't repeat boxes on multiple tabs.
  7. Paring your guide down doesn't mean dumbing it down. It means paring it down to the disciplinary essentials. Many "expert users" may go to LibGuides after running into limitations with One Search, so the subject specific resources are still very important. Limit it though to things you know students will actually use, not things that you want them to use or speculate they might use.
  8. Try to replace many standard boxes with boxes linked to the boxes in the template. For instance, the ask us box, the books box, the reference sources box, etc. Make sure all your databases are linked to the main resource list. You can tell if a database is "linked" by clicking the edit wrench. You can tell if a box is linked just by looking at the guide in edit mode, linked boxes will say so. In some cases, such as the APA and MLA tabs, you may wish to link an entire page, but remember that doing so means you cannot edit your linked page.
  9. On the welcome page, your profile box should be lower than the "ask us" box. Remove your profile box from all other pages.

Example: Welcome Page image from the Art guide

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Creating a welcome image

JD's recommended way to make image:

Go to PicMonkey. Click "edit your photo." Upload a public domain image. Crop if needed (dont' resize yet). Click the square button on the left pannel.  Apply the Polaroid frame.  Use the slider to set rotate to O. Click Apply. Use the "P" button on the left panel. Type the name of the guide in the upper box and click add. Set font toblack and Verdana and resize it over the white part of the image. Click the top icon that looks like a molecule. Resize image so that the biggest size is 250px. Save image.