Guidelines for Guide Content
Guides are More than Lists
- Guides are instructional tools, which often requires longer narrative or explanatory text. At the same time avoid excessive text. Break up explanations with bullets, sub-headings, and other visual cues to group smaller "chunks" of information.
Describe Unclear Resources
- Names of resources whose subject area is not clear, e.g. JSTOR, should always have brief descriptions added to them to indicate the type of content.
Sort Lists of Resources
- Students tend to use the first resources listed. List them in order of importance rather than alphabetically.
- Think about other ways to arrange the sources. For example: in order by importance or value, as you see it; from broad to narrow in subject scope; by date coverage; etc.
Keep Lists Short
- Limit to the top 5 to 7 key resources featured prominently. Consider breaking long lists of resources into different boxes based on similar content type.
Database Descriptions
Less is More
- Usability tests show that students are confused by excessive content. So, tabs, text, lists, number of pages and boxes should be kept to a minimum.
- Strive for usability, not comprehensiveness.
Minimize Print Resource Lists
- Use the Book from the Catalog widget to highlight print resources. See more about this on the Linking tab.
- As with any list, keep mentions of print resources to a minimum (5 to 7 max).
Take caution when copying and pasting content from any source.
- Hidden style code may also be copied along that could break with best practices and introduce inaccessible content.
- There are a few ways to avoid hidden style code from being placed into your guide.
- The rich text editor has a Clear Formatting tool that is helpful. This button will remove all formatting from selected text inside the rich text editor.
- Right-click and select "Paste and Match Style" or "Paste Without Formatting" depending on your browser to paste content without any styling.
