LibGuides Boot Camp: An

Introduction

Michael Johnson, MLS

Circulation Librarian, Shawnee State University

The schedule for today

10 am to 11 am Advantages to libguides and big parts

11 am to 11:15 am Break

11:15 am to 12:15 pm

12:15 pm to 1:15 pm Lunch

1:15 pm to 2:15 pm

2:15 pm to 2:30 pm Break

2:30 pm to 3:30 pm

What we will cover in the

next hour

What is a content management system?

And why is it better then XHTML with CSS websites?

Decisions that should be made before the first

guide is created

Color, format, fonts, etc…

How to make big changes to the entire site

How to best use this services

In the past we only had

static webpages

A static website is one that just uses XHTML and CSS to create a series of linking webpages

Example of one that I made: http://www.wrightedgesolutions.com/

Pros

Code is easy to update

Works well for a small website (less then 10 pages)

Cons

Can lead to sprawl

Really hard to update universal parts

No permission settings

What is a content

management

system(CMS)?

Uses a database to manage content

Instead of 100 identical boxes existing in 100 places, there is one box being mirrored in 100 places

Update the 1 box all the reflections are updated with it instantly

Users only have access to the parts of the page they need access to

Bob can’t delete Tim’s box or page by accident

Examples of CMSs

WordPress, Drupal, Joomla

Why use LibGuides as a

CMS?

It’s a shelf ready product

No need to do coding to set it up or mess around

the back end

It’s designed with librarians and library patrons in

mind

Don’t have to worry about data storage

Spring Share have great support

Once the site is set up easy to train librarians how to create and add content

Before Starting: Think of the

User

Users like a universal feel to things

Church always feels like a church

McDonalds always feels like a McDonalds

Think of the User

Who are your users?

What do they expect?

What do they need to learn?

Less is usually more

Not always true but in the web world less is more

Before Starting: General

Theme

Layout

Column sizes

Banners

Colors

Backgrounds (main area, inside content)

Unused Links, Used Links, Text

Headers

Help use Adobe Kuler

Fonts

For the headers

For the Box Titles, for Text

Before Starting: Fine Tuning How much content?

To a box

To a page

To a guide

Content organization?

How many links to a link box?

Shotgun or scalpel?

What kind of boxes should go into the template?

What is the definition of a commonly used box?

Textual uniformity

When to ampersand

Macro Changes

What is a macro change

All the banners to the site

The background color to the entire site

The tab color

The default text font for the entire site

Limitations

CSS is reverse recursive

So if someone has applied their own formatting,

such as a font, then the macro change won’t

affect it

Macro Changes

Lets take a look

Best Uses: Responsibilities

Decide which librarians are in charge of which guides

Subject areas, expertise, interest

Have at least one person review before

publishing

Choose one person to review guides for links and

boxes that should be moved into the template

Only give super user status to the people that

need it

Content management systems are not forgiving

Best Uses: The First Guides

A to Z Research Guides

Map all the links out of here

That way if the link changes or if the subscription is canceled it will be easy to change across the whole guide

All Research Guides

Use the the A to Z list to pull all links

Allows for several organizations of the same information

Guide Template

Hours and other general information boxes

Best Uses: Demonstrations

Lets take a look:

http://mwj.libguides.com

Assignment

Create one of the following:

A to Z Research Guides

A to Z Databases

Guide Template Page