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Best Practices LibGuide

Use this guide to learn best practices and new ideas for your LibGuides.

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Rubric

The rubric can be found here.

Please read each section in the Concepts To Consider box (on the right side) before designing and updating your LibGuides. Understanding and using these concepts will make it easier for you to create well-designed LibGuides with a clear purpose.

Concepts To Consider

Information & Purposes 

Information in the guides must be relevant to the project, course, topic, or subject at hand. The purpose/goal/objective of the guide should be clearly stated on the first page of the guide. All content, widgets, etc. should also be relevant to subject or course.

Required Elements & Grammar

Guides should have no grammatical errors. They should have links that are appropriate to each guide’s content and that are in working order. Each guide is also required to have each of the following elements: Friendly URL Subject tags (when appropriate) Maps only to databases from A to Z listing Uses resources from Assets (links, books, images, etc.) Any additional elements as requested by project coordinator.

Design 

Guides should be pleasant to look at and easy to navigate. They should contain pictures/graphics/gifs/videos that may be used to good effect in the design of the LibGuide. Effective color and/or font choices must make reading easier. These include the size, placement, background, etc. Boxes should be arranged to make good use of the available space of the page and must flow for the user. Pages/tabs should be limited.

On-Time Completion

Guides created for use in instruction sessions should be created/updated and published at least 2 days before the session. This gives both the instructor and library faculty member facilitating the session time to review and make final corrections and recommendations.

Guides created/updated as part of a specific initiative/project should be completed by the due date stated by the project coordinator.

Overall Effort

Guides that do not receive a minimum of 2 points in any area should immediately be revised to resolve problem areas.

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