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LibGuides: Best practices

Naming your Guides

Guide for multiple sections of the same course

  • Course Code: Title of Course
  • ANT 104: Intro to Cultural Anthropology

Guide for a single professor teaching a course

  • Course Code: Title of Course (Professor Last Name)
  • ECO 121: Macroeconomics (Beccaris-Pescatore)

Guide to support for a unique project

  • Course Code: Project Title (Professor Last Name)
  • GEO 220: Finding GIS Data (Wallace)

Guides related to a major, minor, general research/information literacy topic

  • Marketing
  • Psychology
  • Plagiarism

Naming your Pages

  • Page naming: When naming your guide pages, be concise, clear, and consistent.
  • Establish a clear purpose and navigation for the guide: If you want students to progress through your guide in a certain way, consider renaming the homepage, adding prev/next buttons, or even adding Step 1, Step 2 helpers to the names of your guide pages.
  • Avoid library jargon: Always consider your audience. For freshman, articles is a lot less ambiguous than databases. Students are less likely to click on something they don't understand, so even having an explanation on the page may not be enough.
  • Page names should summarize all its content: If the page includes links to websites, books, and journals, make sure the link says Recommended Resources instead of just Websites. 

Classification: Guide Groups

Unless a guide is placed into a group, the page will not be connected to the website

Get Help 

  • All course/subject guides (ie ENG101: Current Issues Research)
  • All information literacy guides (ie Plagiarism and Copyright)

Your Library

  • Guides about services, policies, and collections

Archives

  • Special group for archives and special collections.

Classification: Guide Types

Right below the guide title on the editing screen you will find the Type/Group classification. Here are the guidelines of how set these options.

Course Guides

  • Must relate to a specific course.
  • Should focus more narrowly on specific topics or course needs/assignments.
  • Must follow the naming format above.

Subject Guides

  • Relate to a major, minor, college, or research topic.
  • Should broadly focus on resources for users in this area of study.

General Purpose Guides

  • These guides cover research concepts and skills that are relevant to all students.

Internal Guides

  • Created for training or library staff only. Will not be listed on LibGuides main page, even if published.

Template Guides

  • Reserved for guides that are created to be templates for re-use.
  • Last Updated: Jan 12, 2023 12:22 PM
  • URL: https://library.mc3.edu/best-practices
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