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LibGuides for Guide Authors: Getting Started (OLD)

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Create A Guide

Everything -- well, nearly everything -- you need to get started with LibGuides and publish your guides

Update

This guide is for archival purposes only.

Please see the new LibGuides Best Practices guide for updated content.

Out of Sight, Not Out of Mind

When you first create a guide, its status is Unpublished. Other BC LibGuides authors can see what you've done, but no one else.

That means you're free to think, try different approaches, change your mind, make mistakes, and learn as you go without worrying that what you've done is out there for everyone to see.

When you're ready to get feedback, you can change the status of your guide to Private. It still won't be listed among the BC LibGuides, but can be viewed by anyone to whom you give the URL: other librarians, faculty, friends, colleagues at other institutions, etc.

When you're ready to make your guide public, there are several steps you need to take. For more on that and on changing a guide's status, see the Review/Publish page.

How to Create A Guide

Creating a new guide:

  • From your main administration page, click on Create New Guide.
  • If you want to use another guide as a template, check "Use an existing guide as a template" and select a guide by searching or switching to the drop-down list.  (You can choose one of your own guides, one from anothert BC librarian, or one from another LibGuides institution.) Otherwise, leave it as "Start Fresh (no template)"
    • If you do use an existing guide as a template, all of the content (tabs and boxes) will be copied into your new guide for use as is or for editing.
  • Give your guide a title.
  • Include a brief description.
    • Note that the title and description can be easily changed before publishing.
  • Click on Create New Guide and you're ready to format the guide and add content.

Formatting your new guide:

  • The first tab in a guide is called Home by default, but it can be changed.
    • Click on the Add/Edit Pages in the yellow command bar and select Change Page Info.
    • Select the Home page for the Page to Change drop-down.
    • Enter a new name.
    • Hit the Save Changes button.
    • You can also add a description of the page.  The description will appear when a user puts the cursor on the tab for that page.

Adding content:

  • Content is added to guides using content boxes arranged on pages (tabs).
  • See Add/Edit Tabs for details on how to add more pages/tabs to a guide.
  • See Add/Edit Boxes for details on the different types of content boxes and how to add them to a page.

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