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. 

Set and forget! - reusing links on your guides

If you reuse the links on your Libguides from our Generic Content Boxes guide you will never need to update these links again!* When you first built your Libguides you may have used the boxes that were on the A-Z template or just built your own links to databases. The transition to Libguides has been a learning curve for everyone involved, including your administrators and this method is not suitable for long term management of database links. We have developed a solution that means once you set your links up following the easy steps below the centrally updated links will display on your guides.

There is an urgency to update your CSA Illumina and Proquest links soon because these two databases will become known as Proquest on a new platform complete with new URL's and very little changeover time, so any links you don't update will be broken by mid-January.   If your current Databases box looks like this (note the yellow square in the top left corner)...

 

...you will need to change your box to the Links and lists type (note the globe in the top left corner)...

If you are already using a links and lists box type, you will need to replace your existing links with the reused links. 

Getting it done:

• At the base of the box, choose to add a new link and choose the option to reuse a link:

•  Select the Generic content boxes guide as below, and begin typing the name of the database and you will see it appear.:
• Tip 1: Type the letter G to skip through the long list of guides to the one you need. 
• Tip 2- There are many Informit databases, type Informit Databases if you just want the general link, and type for example AGIS or letters from the specific databases to find the particular one you need. 

Now that you have reused this link, any future changes required will be made by an administrator and follow through to the guide where you have reused a link.  Although this is work intensive for you now, in the future you won't need to do updates on these links.

Disclaimer: If a link is entirely new, you may need to add it to your page, when links are edited the changes will be automatic on your own guide.