LibGuides Best Practices
To reach our patrons most effectively, best practices are listed throughout this guide for you to follow as a LibGuide creator.
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Libguides is a user-friendly content management system used by University of Utah Libraries and thousands of libraries worldwide. Librarians can use LibGuides to curate knowledge and share information, organize class and specific subject resources, and to create and manage websites. To reach our patrons most effectively best practices are listed throughout this guide for you to follow as a LibGuide creator.
This is by no means a complete list of best practices, but a short and concise list to help you make your LibGuides more user-friendly. Please see the "Additional Resources" box in the bottom left of each page for more extensive information.
When creating a LibGuide consider how:
- Your guide is an introduction to the best resources rather than an extensive list.
- The goal is a user-centered LibGuide, but if your guide is so detailed the reader can’t get through it, or so involved that you can’t keep it up to date, it doesn’t do you or the user any good. Strategize to create minimal work for you to manage your guide’s upkeep.
- Writing for the web and for paper are different. On the web readers tend to scan information rather than reading word for word.
- Scopus This link opens in a new windowScopus is a large abstract and citation database of research literature and patents. The database is updated daily and contains over 70 million records. Scopus indexes over 23,400 peer-reviewed journals from more than 5,000 publishers, including 5500 open access journals. Scopus also indexes 294 trade publications, over 120,000 conferences, and 210,000 books. Additionally, the database contains 44 million patent records from the US Patent & Trademark Office, the European Patent Office, the Japan Patent Office, the World Intellectual Property Organization, and the UK Intellectual Property Office. Seamless links to full-text articles and other library resources.
Additional Resources
- Springshare's Best Practices for Creating LibGuidesBest practices from the creators of LibGuides themselves.
- Getting Started With LibGuidesAdditional best practices and instructions in a LibGuide from the University of Illinois.
- Really Really Ridiculously Good-Looking: Best Practices for Creating LibGuides by Meghan DamourThis chapter greatly informed the guide you're viewing and contains many excellent suggestions for how to create quality LibGuides.
