Waterloo LibGuides for guide authors: Get started

Consistency within and across our research guides is key in making a good user-focused experience. This guide provides templates, guidelines, and resources to help you create user-friendly guides.

Your first step should be to decide the purpose and  target audience of the guide. After that you can start planning it and then creating it!

1. Create your research guide

Use the template to create a research or course guide:

2. Format your new guide

• Use the template:
  • label the Guide and each page with a Friendly URL
    • use all lowercase
  • always include your Profile which has the appropriate information
    • put your Profile box on the right-hand column of the first page
      • title it Your librarian
  • the first page is always titled Get started

• use *up to* 5 tabs
• remember to put the most important information in the F-zone of the page

3. Add content

• Use the pre-formatted column widths in order to provide responsive website content
  • do not customize the widths
• When adding links, use the Link content type, as opposed to writing HTML code
  • always display the description beneath the item title
  • do not use the Hover over option
• The option  Use Proxy? is not needed for our databases.
  • use the database URL as found on our Research and journal databases page
• Use the built in editing features to maintain accessibility and help with maintenance:
  • Headings
  • Bold, italics, etc
  • Font size (don't change the font size. Let you reader control it)
  • use the appropriate content box, eg. Link box for links

4. Create your Profile

Your profile contains descriptive information about who you are, what you do, and how to contact you.

Profile location

The Profile Box is to be placed and kept in the right-most column of the Get started and Help & contacts pages. This is both for usability and for accessibility.

Customize your Profile

• Navigate to LibApps.

• Click on My Profile in the command bar.

• Click on the Profile Page tab.

• Use the Page Settings to configure your profile page

  • leave the Profile Page option set to Enabled.

Profile box title

This announces who you are to the reader.

• the recommended title is: Your librarian

Profile Image

Upload an image of yourself. If you don't have an image or are not comfortable with posting an image to the web, contact the LibGuide administrator.

The image should be:

• current, and kept current
• a photograph OR a true representation of you (e.g., a cartoon or drawing)

Email

The email button will lead to a personalized contact form. The email form must be used because our information desks do not have email clients installed so this is the only way to send email to liaison librarians.

How to set up your email

• do not use the Email Address field found in the Contact Info box of your Profile Page
• do add the following code to the Other Widget Code field found in the Widgets box of your Profile Page:

The following image shows you the code placed in the Other Widget Code field of the Widgets box:

Booking calendar

Add your booking calendar code to the LibCal Widget Code field in your Profile Page.

• Do not add it to the Other Widget Code  field, reserving this field for the email form code.

The following image shows the LibCal Widget Code field.