Guide to LibGuides

Create a Guide from Scratch

1. Go to csun.libapps.com, log in, and use the dropdown menu at the left end of the menu bar to navigate to LibGuides
2. Under LibGuides Shortcuts choose Create Guide.
3. Next to "Choose Layout or Reuse" select Start fresh.  
4. Select a layout (1 or 2 column -- all pages of the guide will have the same layout)
5. Name your Guide (see conventions below) and provide a 1-2 sentence description.
6. Select a Guide Type: Subject Guide, Course Guide, or Topic Guide ONLY
7. Select whether to share your guide content with CSUN guide creators (Internal), all LibGuides authors (Community) or not at all (No).
8. Your guide will remain unpublished until you publish it.

Create a Copy of a Guide to Modify

1. Go to csun.libapps.com, log in, and use the dropdown menu at the left end of the menu bar to navigate to LibGuides
2. Under LibGuides Shortcuts choose Create Guide.
3. Next to "Choose Layout or Reuse" select Copy Content/Layout from an existing guide
4. Choose Use an existing guide as template under Start Fresh...
5. You can copy a guide you have created, another guide from your institution, or a guide from a different institution under Community.
6. Name your Guide (see conventions below) and provide a 1-2 sentence description.
7. Select a Guide Type: Subject Guide, Course Guide, or Topic Guide ONLY
8. Select whether to share your guide content with CSUN guide creators (Internal), all LibGuides authors (Community) or not at all (No).
9. Your guide will remain unpublished until you publish it.

Types of Guides

At CSUN we use three distinct types of LibGuides: topic, course and subject.

Course Guides (e.g., UNIV 100)

• Follow course's learning outcomes
• Supplement instruction
• Totally online instruction

Subject Guides (e.g., Music)

• How to start research in the elected discipline
• Tactics or resources for experienced researchers
• Tutorials for new tools/resources
• Must be tied to a discipline, department, program or major

Topic Guides (e.g., Research Strategies)

• Cover material outside the scope of a subject or course guide
• Pull together information on a central topic or tool.
• Examples:
  • CSUN Initiatives (AL$, Reading Matters)
  • Personal Research (collaboration w/ others)
  • Training for library employees (librarians, staff, students)

Please do not put general information about resources and services in Libguides.  This information is maintained on the Library's main website.

Best Practices guide nomenclature 

• Subject guides should always correspond to a Department or Program listed on the CSUN course catalog.  Any guides that are not associated with a Department, Program, or Course should be made a Topic Guide.
• Course guides should be titled with the course code followed by the course name (e.g., COMP 100: Computers: Their Impact and Use)

URL Best Practices

• All guides start with https://libguides.csun.edu.  You need to append a user-friendly URL "string" to your guide (e.g. https://libguides.csun.edu/guide-to-libguides) .  Sub-pages of your guide should also have distinct strings (e.g. https://libguides.csun.edu/guide-to-libguides/accessibility)
  • Subject guides should take the form libguides.csun.edu/geog (use the code for courses offered within the Department and Program)
  • Course guides URLs should take the form libguides.csun.edu/geog300
  • Topic guides should take the form of libguides.csun.edu/government-documents
    • Use natural language, all lower case, words separated by hyphens.
• URL-string should approximate page title (Heading 1), and both should accurately represent page content

Best practices for metadata tagging

• Browse tags to see if yours aligns with an already existing tag.
• Try to keep tags under 2 words
• Don’t duplicate terms that are included in the Subject Categories (e.g., Math, Engineering).
• Don’t create tags that are course names (e.g, ENG 100).

• To change the owner of your guide, go to https://csun.libapps.com/libguides/guides.php and click the avatar icon next to your guide.
• To add one or more editors to your guide, click the tool wheel menu within your guide's top page.

This tool enables you to:

• Use one piece of content in multiple guides, so you can update only once
• Share your content with other guide authors.

1. After clicking Add New Box select the "Reuse Existing Box" tab.
2. Browse for the guide the box is part of, and then for the box.
3. In "Box Name" type the title you want to give the box.  To use the box AS-IS, leave this field blank.
4. "Position" refers to where you want to place the box in your guide.  You can change this later.
5. Check "Draft mode" if your guide is already published and you don't want this box visible until you've edited it.
6. Check "Create a copy" if you are reusing the existing box as a basis for new content.  If you don't check this box, the content will be updated when the box you are reusing is updated (if it's somebody else's box, you won't necessarily know).

Records Maintenance Standards

Before the beginning of each academic term, guide authors are expected to:

• Review the standards for governance and best practices of LibGuides.
• Ensure that each guide - including collaboratively edited guides - has a point of contact responsible for keeping content up to date.
• Identify accessibility problems and ensure they are resolved (or that inaccessible content is removed).
• Maintain and update system organization: tags, subject categories, look and feel, etc.
• Review usage of metadata, controlled vocabulary in guides to ensure findability.
• Review broken links and use of links to library resources that are not managed by LibGuides’ built-in Databases A-Z functionality.
• Identify redundant content and either sun-set (unpublish) or delete the material(s).

Before the beginning of each academic year, the LIT Team will:

• Review the standards for governance and best practices of LibGuides.
• Ensure that each guide - including collaboratively edited guides - has a point of contact responsible for keeping content up to date.
• Identify accessibility problems and ensure they are resolved (or that inaccessible content is removed).
• Maintain and update system organization: tags, subject categories, look and feel, etc.
• Review usage of metadata, controlled vocabulary in guides to ensure findability.
• Review broken links and use of links to library resources that are not managed by LibGuides’ built-in Databases A-Z functionality.
• Identify redundant content and recommend what should be retained.

Guide Analytics

• LibGuides has built-in statistics (drop-down menu in the console) to let you create custom reports on daily or monthly access to individual guides. You can export these reports in Excel or PDF format.
• If you want more detail (unique users, location of users, how long users spend on your page, whether the user is on mobile) you can use Google Analytics. Please email the Web Services Coordinator with your gmail address to request access. For those new to Google Analytics, training in forthcoming.