Guidelines for creating a Research Guide

1. Keep the number of subject guides to fewer than five in order to maintain consistency among guides and avoid user confusion identifying the “main” research guide.
2. In the unlikely event that there is more than one subject guide, be sure to identify it as “[subject] Main Research Guide.
3. If a guide can be a tab on an existing guide, it should be.  For example, Boolean searching should be a tab on the "Introduction to Library Research" research guide.
4. When selecting “Guide Type,” choose from ONLY: “Subject Guide,” “Course Guide,” and “Topic Guide.” The other options are not descriptive and could confuse users.
5. If the information is only needed for a short time, consider a blog post.  Blog posts are more visible on the Libraries’ homepage in the Noteworthy feed and can easily be linked to and shared with faculty.
6. Any research guide should complement existing website content.  Be sure you are not contradicting information elsewhere.
7. Be wary of including time-sensitive information.  Information like policies and hours can change quickly and are easy to forget to update on a research guide.  Instead, link to library pages containing the information.

Guidelines for updating Research Guides

Guides owned by individuals - Review guides prior to each semester.

1. Review guides for inaccurate information and broken links.
2. Include any new resources which are pertinent.

Course Guides owned by individuals

1. Review course guides prior to each semester.
2. Unpublish course guides if classes are not being offered in the upcoming semester.

Guides owned by Departments

1. Review prior to each semester
2. Department will meet to review guides either as a whole or assign specific research guides to individuals in the department for review.
3. Review guides for inaccurate information and broken links.
4. Include any new resources which are pertinent.

Special Topics/Events Guides

1. Special Topics/Events Guides will be unpublished after the semester the event/program has ended.
2. The owner of the guide will be contacted by the LibGuides administrator prior to unpublishing to ensure it is not needed longer.

Tabs & Formatting Guidelines

Tabs

Each guide will have the following tabs:

• Home (1st tab)
• Databases (2nd tab)
• Course Guides (Penultimate tab - only necessary if discipline has course guides)
• Help (Final tab)

Text

• All html boxes should use the default Font Family, which is Georgia.
• Size can be changed depending on the needs of the guide.
• Do NOT copy and paste into any type of box.  This creates situations of different fonts and formatting which cannot easily be corrected.

Database Links

To create a link to a database, follow the procedure outlined below:

1. Click add/reorder in the box you want to add the database to
2. Select DATABASE
3. Search by name for the database you want to add, then selected it
4. The database will be mapped from the A-Z list on to your guide. It will import the name, link, and the description from the A-Z list. It will already be configured for the proxy. One change about this version of Libguides is that you cannot customize a database description –it only imports what we have in the “official” description.

E-Reference Titles

• Some individual e-reference titles are located within the Databases guide.  If so, follow directions above.

• If the title you are looking for is not located on the Databases guide, please use the permalink in the search, following the same directions listed below for books.

Books

• Links to information on books in the catalog should be created using either the Books from the Catalog or Links & Links Content Box Types. 
• Click on the Add New Book
• Enter ISBN number from the record
• The fields will automatically fill themselves

Help Tab

• The Help tab will be created by either linking out to the Need Help? research guide or by reusing the Home tab on the Need Help research guide.

Home Tab

The Home tab on every research guide should have the following boxes:

• Library Quick Links
• Noteworthy RSS Feed
• Most Used Resources – please have this box located above the fold
• The Library Quick Links and Noteworthy RSS Feed should not be re-created, but rather be copied from this page.

Course Guides

• Course Guides need to be created as a separate guides from their "parent" discipline.
• They will be linked to the main "parent" discipline's guide via a Course Guides tab, placed second from the end, prior to the Help tab.
• Under the Subject Associations within Guide Settings, course guides will only be associated with Course Guides, not the "parent" discipline.

Secondary Guides

• Secondary topics guides are guides on a particular topic which is not a specific course or a separate discipline.  Example: Health Statistics (a sub-topic of Nursing/General Health)
• They are to be created as separate guides and linked to main "parent" guide via a tab
• They will have NO Subject Associations under Guide Settings.  They will only be accessible via the main "parent" guide.