Owner: Someone who has complete access to create and edit content and change guide properties. The Owner is often the original guide creator, but may be someone who has taken over ownership as the result of a guide transfer.
To change the owner of a guide,
Editor: Someone who is allowed to create and edit content on the guide and change the guide properties, excluding the Guide Status
To add a guide editor(s),
You should also set a friendly URL, Subjects, and Tags before creating the content of your guide. These optional fields will help with the discoverability of your guide.
A friendly URL is easy to read and describes the content of the page. It helps users remember the URL more easily and can help describe the content they're about to visit.
Example: https://guides.lib.purdue.edu/creatingalibguide
Subjects, or Subject Associations, provide a way to organize guides by topic, discipline, or subject area.
To add a subject association, click on the pencil icon next to the Subjects section at the top of the guide under guide name and description.
Tags provide a way to organize by keywords and are primarily used to weight and filter search results.
To add tags to a guide, click on the pencil icon next to the Tags section at the top of the guide next to Subjects under the guide name and description.
To create a guide from a template, complete the following steps.
Note: When reusing pages or content from another guide, carefully consider whether or not you'll be making changes to that content. If you do plan to make changes, please choose Copy Assets so that another person's guides are not affected by the changes you make on your own guide.
Reminder: Before publishing your guide, review the Best Practices for creating a LibGuide to ensure that your guide meets the recommended guidelines.
Before creating a new guide from scratch, run a search for an existing LibGuide on your subject or course topic to avoid duplicating content unnecessarily.
If a new guide is necessary, complete the following steps.
Note: When reusing pages or content from another guide, carefully consider whether or not you'll be making changes to that content. If you do plan to make changes, please choose Copy Assets so that another person's guides are not affected by the changes you make on your own guide.
Reminder: Before publishing your guide, review the Best Practices for creating a LibGuide to ensure that your guide meets the recommended guidelines.
The format of your guide name depend on the type of guide you are creating. Course guides have a specific format that should be followed in order to establish consistency in our collection.
If you are creating a course guide you should include the course prefix and number followed by the course name. Many students do not know their course numbers so if you do not include additional identifiers your students may have a hard time finding your guide.
If your guide isn't course specific, try to use a short, but descriptive name.
When creating a new LibGuide or updating an existing one, you need to set the Guide Type and Group. This option can be found at the top of the page under the guide description. Please be sure that both options are set to the same type in order for your guide to show up in the correct categories.
To set the Guide Type/Group, click on the gear icon located in the upper right corner and choose Guide Type & Group.
Guide type tells users the purpose of the guide. For more information on guide types and specific examples of content for each type, see Choosing a Guide Type.
Type | Description | Is it public? |
---|---|---|
How To Guide | Guides created to show how to use library tools or display other (non-course) instructional information. | Yes |
Course Guide | Guides made specifically for classes. | Yes |
Subject Guide | Guides developed as a starting point for users interested in a particular subject or topic. | Yes |
Workshop Guide | Guides made specifically to supplement a workshop or event. | Yes |
Internal Guide | Guides developed for internal staff and faculty only, and display internal documentation or training information. | No |
Template Guide | Guide that is intended to be copied and used as a blueprint or boilerplate template. Similar to the internal guide, this guides will not be added to guide lists or search results. | No |
Guide groups determine how guides are organized into collections. When possible the guide group should match the guide type. For example, a Course Guide belongs in the Course Guides group.
Located under the guide name at the top of the page, a guide description is a brief sentence that gives the user a quick overview of the type of content that is included within a specific guide.
This description also appears on the Subject Guides list, when you hover over the information icon () next to a guide.
If you need to include more information, or want to give more of an introduction to the content of your guide, consider including an introductory content box or section within the body of your guide.
If you want to give users more information on the guide content or give details as to how the guide is organized an introduction section might be something to consider. Please note: a introduction section on a guide is not necessary and may not be appropriate for all guides.
See the Accounting Guide for a specific example.
There are three options for publication status within LibGuides - unpublished, published, and private. Below are brief descriptions of each.
Status | Visible to public? | Included in guide list? | Included in search results? |
---|---|---|---|
Unpublished | No | No |
No |
Private | Yes, but only if they know the URL | No | No |
Published | Yes | Yes | Yes |
For more information on when to use a specific status or changing the status of your guide, see the Change Publication Status section.