LibGuides Help & boxes for reuse: LibGuides Basics & Creating Guides

River Campus Libraries Best Practices:

1. Search for an existing guide on your subject or course topic before creating a new one (Particularly WRT 105 courses).
2. Add LTI metadata to any new guides you create so that they will be linked to appropriate courses in Blackboard.
3. When creating friendly URLs for Subject Guides, use the course prefix for that discipline (e.g. libguides.lib.rochester.edu/chm or libguides.lib.rochester.edu/eng).
4. List course guides under parent discipline for cross listed courses (see CDCS to determine this).  
5. Use of the asterisk for when naming Subject Guides – to have them at the top of the list and not mixed into the middle of a list of Course Guides (e.g. * Psychology).
6. Positioning Boxes on each page - Highest priority boxes should be in upper left corner of libguide (Mobile devices read boxes)
7. Make use of general boxes for reuse (which you can copy from the Boxes for reuse tab).  
8. Use mapping and templates whenever possible to reduce workload when changes need to be made (e.g. one template for multiple courses, or Individuals boxes for reuse) to help with maintenance.
9. Use a chat widget in profile box rather than as a separate box (See the LibraryH3lp libguide for directions).
10. Test your subject guide on a mobile device to be sure it looks the way you anticipated it would (e.g. tabs across top vs vertical tabs box placement).
11. For optimization with Summon, all guides should have a description, be assigned to a subject and tags. In order for an outreach librarian’s profile to show in summon for their disciplines, a profile box must be on the first page/home tab of the guide.  Note that tab menus are indexed in summon if you use the tab-based layouts; side-nav layout is optimal for mobile devices but menus will not be indexed.  Summon indexes approx. once a week, so it may take that long for changes to appear.
12. Refer to any Summon over Alma search as Articles, Books and More rather than Articles & Books.

Basic LibGuides subscribers have access to Homepage, Guide, and Asset reports, as well as the Content Summary.  Here’s a great guide on how to collect statistics about your LibGuides: 

Note:

• Stats aren’t counted if you click on links while logged into edit mode or if your are previewing a guide.
• Stats are not collected for links inside rich text.  Don't put links in there unless you're okay with not keeping any stats for the link!

For Example:

Looking for inspiration for building a new guide?
Want to see how other academic librarians have built their subject/course guides?
Want to see how other libraries have described a particular database/resource?
Want to see how many/which other academic libraries have subscriptions to a particular database?

Check out the LibGuides Community!

Here’s a link to the webinar recording (under the resources tab on this guide) on how our BrowZine subscription can be integrated into LibGuides.  Also available are instructions on creating a widget, journal table or browzine search box (all three are covered in the webinar). An example of the widget can be seen below the profile box on the PSC LibGuide.

1) Guide type: Subject Guide (your guide will not appear in the course guides list if they are mislabeled as general).  If you forget to set the guide type and it is created as the default type (General purpose), you can change it on the course guide: select the settings gear, then Guide type, then select Course Guide.

2) Assign Subject Associations: On the course guide, click on the edit (pen icon) next to subject on the upper left corner of the guide. From the dropdown list that appears, check all the subject associations that apply. Note: WRT courses should have Writing Program assigned as the subject.

3) Add Metadata for Mapping to Blackboard:

•   On the course guide, select settings, then metadata, then custom metadata
  
• In the metadata box, select add record and add the following
  • Name: lti_course
  • Value: the course ID prefix for the subject (e.g. PSCI)
  • Public: check the box

Add as many subjects as is applicable...

Before you create a new guide, check LibGuides to be sure that it doesn't already exist. If one already exists, ask the owner of the to be made an editor or ask to take over ownership of the guide.  If one doesn't yet exist, use the following steps to create your new guide.

1) Guide Name: Formatting should mirror LibCal specifications for consistency.

• CoursePrefix CourseNumber Full Title Of Course (no abbreviations, no punctuation such as dashes or colons between course prefix and title), for example: PSCI 233 Innovation in Public Service (Jordan)
• For WRTG 105, also include the instructor's last name in parenthesis, for example:  WRTG 105 Robots & Races (Otis)

2) Guide type: Course Guide (your guide will not appear in the course guides list if they are mislabeled as general).  If you forget to set the guide type and it is created as the default type (General purpose), you can change it on the course guide.  Select the settings gear, then Guide type, then select Course Guide.

3) Assign Subject Associations: On the course guide, click on the edit (pen icon) next to subject on the upper left corner of the guide. From the dropdown list that appears, check all the subject associations that apply. Note: WRTG courses should have Writing Program assigned as the subject.

• If the metadata is left blank, students will be taken to the WRT landing page (http://libguides.lib.rochester.edu/wrtg) where they can select their course guide from a list of WRTG classes.
• If the full blackboard course ID is used, this metadata must be updated every semester.
• Please do not use WRTG or WRTG105 in the value field as it confuses the LTI tool functionality and ALL WRT 105 classes will be diverted to your course guide.
• If there are multiple sections and thus multiple course IDs, you should include them all. For example: