Adding a profile box for multiple people on your guide

This information is on the Libguides for Authors guide.

HEX colours

Have you been wondering where this went.  You could find it when you edited box information, but it is no longer there.  Bookmark this site: http://cloford.com/resources/colours/500col.htm

Pop Up Text

Have you been to a webpage when you've moused over some of the text and a pop up box appears. You can do this in LibGuides with a little bit of effort, just follow these steps:

1. Select edit text
2. Use the plain text editor
3. Insert the necessary code at the appropriate spot, see code in the image below.

4. You will also need to add this code to the Custom JS/CSS Code on your guide

This is what the example above looks like when live at: http://libguides.jcu.edu.au/content.php?pid=170116&sid=1433014#4561080 (mouse over the purple bold text). Bronwyn Mathiesen has also used it on the Business@JCU guide, see an example at: http://libguides.jcu.edu.au/content.php?pid=272838&sid=2488044 (mouse over the bold green text).

This is quite useful for terminology and providing additional information on your guides.  Free free to get in touch if you want some assistance or more information.

The images and information have been added to the Guide for Authors.

Hiding Tabs, Pages or Guides

It is a good idea when you are working on new content that you keep it hidden until it is ready to be published. Of course unpublished guides are automatically hidden and those that are private are also hidden (unless the owner sends you the link). 

You can hid a top level tab (which automatically hids the subtabs) or you can hide a particular subtab.  From the Add/Edit Pages option select Change Page Info.  Select the page you want to change and tick the Hide this page option. When you are ready you can reverse this process.

Other uses for the Hide this page option include:

1. Content under construction
2. Content that is no longer current (i.e. change of referencing style from APA to Harvard on a subject guide).  You would just hide the page and create a new page with updated content.  This way you can reuse it if necessary
3. Hide subject specific tabs for semesters when that subject is not taught (i.e. AN1001 taught in SP2 so you could hide the content for SP1)
4. Create a tab to store useful information/instructions for guide authors (we have done this on the Referencing guide).

In fact I usually have a hidden tab on most of my published guides so that I can easily move boxes around and experiment with content and still have it all in the same place.  This makes it easier to discover.  I prefer this method to having a sandpit.

Let me know if you have found any other uses for hidden pages.

Backups and Copies of LibGuides

There are a couple of ways to do this. Under guide settings select Create backup.  This will create a linear offline copy of your guide that is stored on your PC. You can't restore directly from this file but you would at least have a copy of the content if for some reason your guide (or part thereof) was accidently deleted.

The other way is to make a copy of your guide at a particular point in time.  I wouldn't recommend that this was necessary for all of your guides but if you are doing a lot of work on a guide or have a number of collaborators on a guide or particular project you might want to consider this option.

From the Guides tab on your Dashboard select create a new guide.  Select Use an existing guide as a template and select the guide you wish to copy. Give it a meaningful name and keep it unpublished. For example:-

1. X_ICAS 30April2012
2. Archived ICAS 30April2012
3. Copy_ICAS 30April2012
4. ICAS_copy 30April2012

After some deliberation I've stuck with option  1 above because it keeps all my copies together at the end of my list of guides.  You may wish to start with the same name to keep your published and archived copy together on your list.  Just pick on and be consistent.

Deep linking to Reserve Online on your LibGuide

It is pretty easy to provide URLs to those articles we already provide digitally, but what about those PDF files in Reserve Online. Thanks to Alan we can now do this. Firstly search for the item in Reserve Online and click the (i) button next to the title and note the item ID. Then go to the Deep Linking to Reserve Online webpage in JustUs and follow the instructions.  You get a nice stable URL that you can use on your LibGuide.  Don't forget to use the Links and Lists content box for these so that you can track the usage.

See examples of this on the Assignment topics tab of the BA1001 guide: http://libguides.jcu.edu.au/content.php?pid=81856&sid=763742.

Recently I've wanted to add items to Reserve Online to link to LibGuides that may not necessarily be core or supplemental readings.  For instance articles on presentations, group work, essay planning etc.  Talked this over with staff and we now have a subject code in Reserve Online for this.  The code is IL1001 (Information Literacy 1001).  You can request scans of chapters or elinks be added to this code for relinking on LibGuides.  Try searching in Reserve Online for IL1001 to see what I mean.

Link Checking

Be alert for the email reminder coming to you on Monday asking you to run the link checker tool in Libguides. Many JCU department sites have changed their structure recently leading to some broken links. Even if you are not the owner of a particular guide (say you might be the co-owner and the Faculty Librarian is the top-level owner) but you look after that guide, you can still do a link check on the guides you work on. 

On the yellow menu at the top of your screen when you are signed in, choose Tools>Link Checker and then select look at  All guides and just Published guides and then click the column heading for Guide Name and you can easily browse to the guide you are looking for.

Although this report can be run at any time the reason for sending a reminder is so that your Admins have a chance to do updates on those guides that we all benefit from; the Generic Content Boxes guide and the A-Z template and you won't need to fix any links that you have re-used from these guides. The link-checker report runs on a Saturday and does not update the instant that you fix a broken link. That broken link will be reported until the next time the Libguides platform runs the report the next week.  By running your own report when the reminder arrives, you won't see any unnecessary broken link reports.