Emory's LibGuide on LibGuides: Best Practices & Guidelines for Creating and Maintaining LibGuides

Deliverables

The Task Force will produce an end-of-year report due December 2020 highlighting accomplishments, recommendations for best practices and standards, and recommendations for any continued work and operations etc.

The Task Force will produce deliverables in the following areas of focus:

1.Boilerplate content and materials

• Produce more boilerplate and reusable content for the “Guide on Guides” LibGuide.

2.Training

• Produce training materials around guides such as templates, directions on making user interface updates, leveraging common assets, etc.  

• Provide in-person training opportunities around guides at various times of year and in various locations in order to reach the broadest possible audience.

• In partnership with ATS, provide training on integrating guides into Canvas and best practices on course guides to best display and function in Canvas.

3.Analysis

• Do an inventory and establish a review process of LibGuides categories, tags, subjects, etc. to ensure consistency for our users.

4.Communication

• Create a marketing plan for LibGuides to ensure that the campus community is aware of our LibGuides as a resource, including the integration of course guides into Canvas.

• Set up procedures for people make suggestions or requests to the LibGuides Task Force.

5.Workflows and Maintenance

• Create checklists, calendars, and scheduled reminders to do tasks at certain times to ensure that guide authors are equipped to maintain and update their LibGuides.

• Develop content guidelines for LibGuides.

• Share peer review rubrics where people can opt-in to get feedback and support on their guides from a peer.

Meeting Schedule

Group members will meet monthly, or more often as needed, starting in January 2020. Phase 2 of the LibGuides Task Force is anticipated to last until December 2020.

Deliverables

1. Help clarify need for developing best practices, standardization, and making better, more usable guides. Understand audience, etc.
2. Lit Review – help demonstrate national attention and importance.  (be sure to include information gathered at conferences like the Collective, ACRL, and ALA)
3. Develop easy to follow guidelines that can be incorporated into LibGuide refresh projects that happen anyway (metadata project to assign appropriate TYPE to each published guide (course, subject, etc.)
4. Help promote left-navigation for future guides.
5. Review controlled vocabulary SUBJECT list to create standardization with the subjects on the website and elsewhere.
6. Provide examples/templates  for
   1. naming conventions
   2. friendly url guidelines
   3. Update Database FORM & provide standards for database blurbs (utilize community resources whenever possible, e.g. https://ask.springshare.com/libguides/faq/989 )
7. Make suggestions to operationalize on-going libguide work, such as
   1. Recommend a standing sub-group to the Instruction Steering Group, chaired by the Instruction & Engagement Head
   2. Recommend which team and/or individual will be the LibGuides’ “go-to”
   3. Plan for creating “boiler plate” content (summer students may be able to do this)
   4. Recommendations for future user studies
   5. Recommendations for libguide Marketing Strategies
   6. Establish guide maintenance protocols, e.g.
      1. Reminders at the end of each semester to make old guides private
      2. Tips and training refreshers at the beginning of each semester
      3. Summer projects to identify/fix broken links and review/update templates and "boiler plate" material
   7. Help maintain database asset blurbs.
   8. Investigate new CMS features, Canvas integration, mobile responsiveness, and accessibility and make suggestions