LibGuides Best Practices

Groups are a LibGuides CMS-only feature that allow you to organize related guides. Each group has its own homepage, look & feel options, and friendly URL. On the Research Guides homepage, you can view published guides organized by group on the BY GROUP tab. This is the default display.

For a guide to appear on the default BY GROUP tab on the Research Guides homepage, it must be assigned to a group. A guide can only be assigned to one group.

The Groups roughly correspond to UCI's academic units, or "schools." In addition, there are three topic-based groups that begin with "I" statements: "I Am Sharing My Research," "I Want to Find," and "I Want to Learn About."

Current groups:

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Types provide a way to organize similar guides and adjusts their visibility. On the Research Guides homepage, you can view published guides organized by Type on the BY TYPE tab, giving users another avenue for finding the guides they need. Public guide types are displayed on the Research Guides homepage, while internal guide types are not. 

Public guide types:
 

General Purpose

• Purpose: Guides that are general or multidisciplinary in nature, or don't fit into one of the below types.
• Examples: Citation Styles & Tools, Celebrating One and All, News & Newspapers

Course Guide

• Purpose: Provides research guidance tailored to a specific course or program.
• Examples: Writing 60: Argument & Research

Subject Guide

• Purpose: Provides a (nearly) comprehensive overview of doing research in a particular subject area. 
• Examples: Anthropology, Business, Nursing

Topic Guide

• Purpose: Covers a specific and discrete topic; may be a sub-topic of a broader Subject Guide.
• Examples: Systematic Reviews & Evidence Synthesis Methods, Morphic

Internal guide types:
 

Internal Guide

• Purpose: Internal guides that provide information for library staff. 
• Examples: LibGuides Accessibility, LibGuides Best Practices

Template Guide

• Purpose: Guides that serve as blueprints or storage for reusable content. (Boxes from Template Guides can be reused by anyone regardless of account level, guide status, or group access.)
• Examples: Reusable Boxes, Widgets, and more

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Subject categories provide a way to organize guides by topic, discipline, or subject area. On the Research Guides homepage, you can view published guides organized by subject on the BY SUBJECT tab.

Current subjects:

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Tags help you organize your guides. Unlike subject categories that facilitate easier browsing, the primary benefit of tags can be seen when searching for guides. Tags help improve the relevancy ranking of guides and also appear as facets on the search results page, giving users another option for filtering results.

Tags are not currently in-use at the UCI Libraries. Some users have added them ad-hoc overtime, but there is no standardizations or guidance for creating and applying tags at this time. 

For maintenance purposes, the Working Group may delete current tags from the system at a future date. Advanced notice and an opportunity to provide feedback will be provided beforehand.

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