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 Of course unpublished guides are automatically hidden and those that are private are also hidden (unless the owner sends you the link).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 Content that is no longer current (i.e. change of referencing style from APA to Harvard on a subject guide).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. 

Books from the catalogue images

If a book's ISBN does not provide you with an image via Syndetics, there is another option.

1. Go to the web and find a viable image of the book - one that will hopefully have a stable url. 
2. Right click on the book image and Copy image location
3. Go to the Cover Art box of your book entry, select the Other radio button, and paste in the book image url. 
4. Save Book Info.

New for newspapers

We now have access to PressDisplay, an online newspaper database. Please check to see if your LibGuides require updating as a result. I have updated the Newspapers LibGuide and Generic Guide newspaper information.  I have also included PressDisplay in the Generic Guide database links list. Please link your LibGuide newspaper boxes/pages to the Generic Guide so that the information updates automatically in future.

PressDisplay seems to be much less clunky than NewsBank. However PressDisplay only provides access to a 60 day back catalogue of articles. Coverage is excellent - over 1700 newspapers from 92 countries, displayed in their original format and accessible by country, language, or title.

Measuring Research Impact libguide

The Measuring Research Impact libguide has been published. The target audience for this libguide is researchers at JCU.  It covers:

• Why measure impact and issues to be aware of when measuring research impact - on each page of the libguide
• Bibliometrics - what is it?
• Web of Science, Scopus and some other citation databases
• Cited reference searching: tracking publications which cite a central publications, or the publications cited in the central publication
• Journal Evaluation: tools available in Thomson Reuters (including Journal Impact Factor / Journal Citation Reports); Scopus; and other sources grouped by Multidisciplinary, AESS and LBCA
• Researcher Impact: collating research publications and calculating a h-index in Web of Science and Scopus
• Databases for benchmarking performance, including InCites and Shanghai Jiao Tong University Academic Ranking of World Universities.

APA electronic referencing guide changes web address

The APA Style Guide to Electronic Resource which we have password protected at http://www.jcu.edu.au/intra/journal_access/APA_style_reference.pdf and linked to from Horizon and the APA LibGuide is being moved to a new permanent address here: https://www-internal.jcu.edu.au/libcomp/assist/referencing/JCU_097386

The book listing under the referencing tab in the Generic content boxes guide now has the new address. Please change any lisiting in your guides so that it links to the book link in the Generic content boxes guide.

admin_stuff

If you see a post with the label admin_stuff you probably don't need to pay it too much attention. I have been using this blog as a way of posting from the Libguides FAQ site when I find something helpful as I sometimes have trouble backtracking to information I have used and might want again.

Guide FAQ: How do I get the Last Update to appear in the Footer?

Guide FAQ: How do I get the Last Update to appear in the Footer?

Guide FAQ: How do I remove (or hide or delete) the last update date, guide URL, print guide, RSS update, email alerts, or share links at the top of a guide?

Guide FAQ: How do I remove (or hide or delete) the last update date, guide URL, print guide, RSS update, email alerts, or share links at the top of a guide?

New guides for SC1101 & EV1011

New LibGuides are now available for SC1101 (Science: Nature, Knowledge & Understanding), and EV1011 (Introduction to Sustainability)

Losing boxes (and box content) when you hide a column

Hiding a column hides but does not remove the content from boxes in that column. This is good news if you hide the wrong column. To fix, go back to resizing the columns option and unhide the column.

Note that to display 1 column only, you need to display the centre column so you may need to move your box to the centre column, then hide the left and right columns.

New additions to database links and lists

Database subset links have been added to the databases links and lists in the Generic Content Boxes guide.

• SpringerLink - Humanities, Social Sciences and Law   This link takes you to the Humanities, Social Sciences and Law subset of the SpringerLink journals
• Taylor and Francis Online - Social Science     Will take you to the Social Sciences subset of the Taylor and Francis journals. Disciplines covered include: Anthropology, Criminology and Criminal Justice, Gender Studies, Sociology and Social Policy.

If you want other subsets added do so or ask a staff member with write access to the Generic contact boxes guide.

New BZ1001 LibGuide

A new LibGuide for BZ1001 (Fundamentals of Biology) is now available

Campus Guides

The company that provides our Libguides software is called Springshare. At JCU we recently upgraded our software to the Campus Guides product. For your typical user and editor there is no change in the user experience or skills required to do your usual updating.

Campus Guides does open up a lot of new features to make our guides more customisable and allow more interactive usage, such as designing our own forms and surveys. We will be organising a Webinar by Springhare for people to find out more about Campus Guides. They do offer regular Webinars from their website but they are in the evening in our time zone so we will organise one at a more convenient time. 

In the interim there is plenty of information on their site to introduce the features of Campus Guides. Here are some ideas to get you thinking about possible uses for the forms and surveys feature. Contact a member of the Libguides committee if you would like to put forward your ideas for this feature. 

The Libguides Committee

If you have any questions about Libguides, such as how to do something or a great idea you've had for our guides then please let a member of the Libguides committee know about it. We meet regularly and will present your feedback and ideas at our meetings. 

The current committe is:

Andrew Stacey

Bronwen Forster

Bronwyn Mathiesen

Helen Hooper

Kim Lewin

Stephen Anderson