LibGuides How-To Guide

Administrative

•   Give your guides a friendly URL
•   Add Subjects and Tags to your guides
•   Include your contact information
•   Include a photo of yourself in your profile, or at least some kind of image (some options)
•   Integrate your guides with Canvas using Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI)

Accessibility

•   Use descriptive link text — no "click here" links!
•   Add alt tags to images (describe the image for those who cannot see it)
•   Try to avoid using tables
•   Make PDFs accessible for screen readers (see PDF Accessibility)
•   Save Word, Excel, and other text documents as PDFs before uploading them, and add "PDF" to the end of the link name.
•   Make sure video content includes closed captioning or a transcript
•   When embedding content in an iframe, add a title attribute (see “Be sure to add titles to iFrames” for help)

Content

•   Use as little text as necessary to get the point across
•   Ensure the text is typo and error free
•   Use acronyms sparingly and spell them out on the first occurrence. 
•   Avoid library jargon and complex scholarly terminology
•   For course guides, match the language to the syllabus and align it with course objectives
•   Add databases using the Database content type
•   Reuse content where possible!
•   Use small images to reduce load time
•   Have links to external sites open in new tabs
•  

Assessment & Maintenance

•   Monitor guide usage by viewing statistics
•   Focus on having fewer, high-quality guides that can be effectively maintained
•   Regularly review and update guides to ensure content remains current and relevant
•   Use the Link Checker occasionally to weed out dead links (or add the Check My Links browser extension to your browser for a more reliable link checker!)