TCC Library LibGuide Best Practices: New Guides

To ensure quality content and avoid duplication, please respond to these questions and email the answers to all full-time and part-time librarians before beginning a new research guide.

Allow time for librarians to respond.

1. Guide Idea Origin or Request (check all that apply) and tell the origin story  __Faculty __Student __Colleague __Library Director/Dean __Your Brilliant Idea __Special Event __SpringShare Community Site
2. What is the purpose and goal of this guide?
3. Who is the targeted audience for this guide? Is it for a specific campus?
4. What guide Type would this fall under and would it duplicate content available on other research guides, the library website, TCC’s website, etc.? (see below for choices)
5. Other comments:

Types of Guides with examples:                                                 

General Purpose Guide: this is the default and most generic

• TCC Library Liaisons

Subject Guide: this guide focuses on a specific subject area.  

• Chemistry
• Native American Studies

Course Guide: this guide is created for a specific course or instructor.  

• Introduction to Philosophy (PHIL 1113)
• Hollywood's America (HUMN 2663 - Alexa Larson-Thorisch)

Topic Guide: this guide focuses on a specific topic or event.

• 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre
• Generative AI

Current listing of guides by type at TCC Library. 

Subject guide: use the simplest form of the topic.

• ex: Chemistry

Course guide: use the course name as the title. Add the shortened course name and number in parentheses. 

• ex: Introduction to Philosophy (PHIL 1113)

Course guide for a specific instructor: use the course name as the title.  Add the shortened course name and number in parenthesis, followed by a dash and the instructor’s full name. 

• ex: Introduction to Philosophy (PHIL 1113-Heather Wilburn)

Publishing

1. Before publishing your guide ensure that it adheres to the guidelines in this document.

2. Before publishing your guide send the link to your designated peer reviewers for feedback. The peer review matchup is on the home page under Your Reviewers. 

3. Create a backup of each of your guides.

4. Librarians can promote their guides on TCC Library’s Facebook page.

5. Add Custom Metadata to your if the guide is to be published on Blackboard (LTI Tool). EX: I_COMM_1113

Published - visible to all and appears on the Research Guides page

Private - link to this page is visible to all, guide does not appear on Research Guides page

Unpublished - visible to none 

Internal - visible to LibApps users once they are logged in

When is a libguide proposal necessary? Remember, new guides are proposed to the TCC Librarians via email. 

• When it will be listed on the Research Guides page
• When it is a guide for specific areas taught at TCC
• When it is to be published in BB using the LTI (Learning Tools Interoperability) tool. 
• When it is for a specific instructor.
• When it is for a specific course.

Guides should only be created if they have a specific curricular support purpose or meet other research or internal needs.

Remember that FAQs are an alternative if there is not enough information to warrant an entire guide. 

Proposing a guide is important to prevent duplication, communicate with librarians about new guides, and ensure quality content.  However, there are instances when a guide does not need to be proposed:

• Internal guides - these are only seen by logged-in users
• Common Book Guide 
• OER textbooks - guides (or links to Pressbooks) are kept on the OER Group page and updated by the OER Team
• Marketing guides- (must be a librarian from the Marketing Team)
• Sandbox guides 
• A member of LMT directly asks for the guide to be created. (special circumstances, event communications (Tulsa Area United Way or PD Day)
• A member of LMT creates the guide themselves (still responsible for updating and communicating the guide's existence). 

Provide a one-sentence description of the guide.

• Ex: This guide will help you do research in history.
• Ex: This guide will help you find general information related to your study of humanities.

Associate your guide with one appropriate subject category. If there is no appropriate subject category, contact an administrator to create a new one. Do not add tags to your guide

Establish a “friendly URL” for your guide. This will allow users to access often-used guides more easily. For a subject guide, use the title of the guide. For a course guide, use the shortened course name and number.

When a guide is promoting awareness of a group or an event for a month, a “month” guide, it is visible only in the month it honors (ex: Women's History Month in March).  "Month" guides are set to private so it is not visible on the public guide list but can still be accessed year-round using the link. Other topic guides like the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre are appropriate to leave up year-round. 

It is the Marketing Team that makes the choice if they want a guide or FAQ for promotion.  Guides created from Marketing Team decisions are owned by a Marketing Team Librarian.  However, any guide can be promoted and Marketing will reach out to the owner to let them know it's going to be linked in a slide or shared in MyTCC. 

Banners for the top of the libguide can be made at 1200x 200 but they are constrained to 1170 x 195 in a browser by the default width of the box.

Slide pictures look best at 1100 x 600 but the size they display in a browser on a computer is 550 x 300, larger on a phone. 

Directory photos are 200x250.