Best Practices for UCL LibGuides

Instructions on how to create an online skills guide or a subject guide.

• What types of guide can I create?
• Creating a skills guide
• Creating a subject guide
• Creating a friendly URL for your guide
• LibGuides terminology (right column)

There are two main groups of public-facing guides that you might be creating, or contributing to; skills guides and subject guides. There is a third group of guides that are for internal use only, such as test / training guides, best practice guides, template guides and the reusable content guide. 

Tip: If you wish to create some content, think carefully about whether you require a whole 'guide' or whether the content is better suited to a page or a box that can be re-used in multiple guides.

Skills guides are created by admin users, who assign editing rights to relevant editors. You may have been invited / commissioned to create a guide for a particular project or purpose. Alternatively you may wish to propose a new guide. The Online Library Skills Working Group encourages, supports and oversees the development of library skills guides. If you wish to create a guide, please submit a proposal and someone will get back to you to discuss next steps

There is a choice of templates that may be used to create a guide, depending on its nature and purpose. As an editor, you should liaise with the admin user creating your guide in order to ensure the appropriate template is used.

Templates include:

Within each template there is guidance on which elements should be retained and which are optional or may be edited.

Where possible you should use a template or an existing guide as the basis of your new guide, rather than creating one from scratch.

Subject guides can be created by anyone with access to the Subject guides group in LibGuides. However, please do not create any new guides without submitting a New Subject Guide Proposal to the Subject Guides Sub-committee for approval. We cannot guarantee to publish any guides created without going through this process.

There is one template for all subject guides, which you will need to make a copy of you to create your guide. It includes instructions, required and optional content.

To create your guide:

• Click on Content in the top menu bar, select Guides from the drop-down, then click on Create New Guide at the top of the page 
• In the Choose Layout or Reuse drop down, select Copy content / layout from an existing guide
• In the Select a guide box type 'Subject guide template' then select it from the drop-down
• Ignore the Copy assets check box as you do not want to create copies (much of the content is generic and centrally updated so you don't have to edit it). 

• In the Guide Name box, enter a title for your guide. This should be the subject area and keep it as short as possible. See also the guidance on Renaming a guide.
• In the Guide Type drop down, select Subject Guide
• In the Group Assignment drop down, select Subject guides
• Click on Create Guide at the bottom of the page

Before you start to populate your guide, at the top of the page, under the guide title:

• Edit the URL to make it more user friendly. See Friendly URLs.
• Assign a subject from the drop down list

Now you've created your guide, you can edit it and add content. Please go to the Create and reuse content page in this guide for guidance on how to do this.

Create a friendly URL for your guide and each page within it to make it easier for users to find. Edit the URL by clicking the pencil icon next to the existing guide or page URL at the top.

The friendly URL for the guide should match the title (minus any words like 'and', 'the'). If a guide or page title has more than one word, use hyphens (not underscore) to separate words, and ensure letters are all lowercase, e.g. film-studies

Note: Be careful if you decide to change a guide or page URL, as any links to it within other pages or guides content boxes on the page will be broken if you amend it. Check links within your guide and let other guide owners know if they link to your guide.

LibGuide

A collection of one or more pages. Each page is represented as a tab, or sub-tab within the guide. 

Page

Forms all or part of a LibGuide. Comprised of boxes of content.

Box

A container for specific content (asset/s) on a page. 

Asset

A piece of content, displayed within a box. This could be text, a web or database link, an embedded video or image, etc