Guidelines

General:

Follow existing web guidelines whenever possible, including use of color and recommended fonts.

You can use LibGuides to create any sort of research guide: publication types, subject pages, databases cheatsheets, course pages, etc.

Publication type, subject page, course page

Setting up your profile:

Label the profile box (and all boxes!) wisely:

• My Profile
• Ask Us
• Subject Specialist
• Dewey Library (or other library name)
• Questions?

http://libguides.mit.edu/21W-732-01

Use your Kerberos ID for your profile shortcut.

http://libguides.mit.edu/profile/darcy

Only include your name in the "Display Name" field.

Staff photo use guidelines should be followed, if you choose to use a photo.  No avatars!  Hide the photo box on each guide, if you don't use a picture.   

http://libguides.mit.edu/compsci

Use "friendly" URLs (shortcut URLs) for all pages.

Adding chat contact info is optional.  People are welcome to embed Meebo boxes, but color should match with our color scheme (black, meebo, mac, meebome).

http://libguides.mit.edu/theater

Contact information should always display in top right.  You can delete the default profile box, as long as you add a new box with contact info. 

http://libguides.mit.edu/companies

Page layout:

The fewer boxes, the better!  Keep it simple.  No set limit to number of boxes allowed on page, but if it looks cluttered or if scrolling is excessive, consider reorganizing or using Dreamweaver.

1, 2, and 3 column layouts are all ok to use use.  

http://libguides.mit.edu/humgeneral (2 column)
http://libguides.mit.edu/materials (3 column)

Set a maximum of 5 or 6 tabs per page.  Subtabs may be used as a last resort, but should be kept as simple as possible and labeled wisely.  Make sure the tab name and the page name match.  Don't link tabs to URLs outside of your guide, since the tabs are meant for navigating within your guide. 

http://libguides.mit.edu/circ

If you use tabs, make sure to link to the tabs somewhere on the main page.  Users don't always see tabs, so providing alternate navigation helps.

http://libguides.mit.edu/circ

When given an option, have links open in a new tab/window.

Choose to "link to" or "copy" wisely.  Any time the content should be maintained by one person, use link to (ex., search box on tools page). 

http://libguides.mit.edu/tools

You can also copy or link to database information.  If you want to change any info on the database pages, e-mail Marion.

• Pros of linking to the list:
  • Always up to date
• Pros of copying it: 
  • Can customize it
  • Can add the descriptions to the page
    

http://libguides.mit.edu/databases

Content:

Less is more!  Usability tests show that users get overwhelmed with a lot of content, so keep text to a minimum.  Organize your content so that you can have fewer boxes and columns.

Users tend to choose databases based on names - if the name of the database doesn't indicate the content (like Compendex), they don't go there.  Use descriptive words in or near the database titles if not clear.

Example of a clear way to do this:

Find articles related to...

• biology: BIOSIS
• chemistry: SciFinder
• computer science, electrical engineering, physics: Inspec
• engineering: Compendex
• math: MathSciNet
• medicine: PubMed
• science: Web of Science

Put databases in order by importance, not in alphabetical order.  Users tend to choose the first databases in the list, not the most relevant.  

Users get confused with too much contact information, so make it clear by providing one way to contact us for help.  (ex., Don't include links to Ask Us AND ask-dewey.)

Other features:

You can turn comments off, or leave them on.  Comments are centrally set to be "moderated" by the page editors. 

Don't use tags feature.

You can either upload images and images through LibGuides (in edit mode), or store them on the Libraries server, and you can link to them from your LibGuide.  If you need permissions, or if you don't know how to upload, ask libguides@mit.edu to do it for you.  Upload to:

• www/guides/libguides/img
• www/guides/libguides/files

http://libguides.mit.edu/compsci

Making pages live:

Make sure to add a "friendly" shortcut URL for each page.  If you're making a test page, end the URL with "-test".  LibGuides won't let you use a "dot", so if you're creating a course page in LibGuides, use a hyphen in the friendly URL in place of the dot.

http://libguides.mit.edu/2-009

If you want to save an old version of a page, change the page title to include the date, or some other identifier that will show that it's an old page (ex., "Product Engineering Processes, 2007"). Also, change the shortcut URL to "pagetitle-old" (ex., biology-old), and change the status to "private."  If you have more than one old version saved, you could use "pagetitle-old-2007" or something else that would make sense.

Add one or more subject categories per page.

Keep pages public or private.  Don't bother with unpublished.

No need to get approval to post pages.  Tell Marion when it's live so she can update links to it from pages on our site that link to it, including our Site Index.

If you don't want a guide anymore, delete it!  (You can delete the page that Marion made for you originally, too, if you're not using it anymore.)