1. After you log in, click Home in the upper, left-hand corner of the menu bar.

2. In LibGuides Shortcuts box, click on the Create Guide link.

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1. Select Start Fresh from the Choose Layout or Reuse dropdown.

2. In the Guide Name box, enter a title for your guide.

   • For a Course Guide, use the course number, followed by the course title, separated with a colon, like “PWR 1VK: Rhetorics of Trauma”. Some students, and faculty, will only remember the course number or the name, so it’s best to include both.

   • For a Topic Guide, be concise yet descriptive and use sentence case and no punctuation. "?" and ";" are the only exceptions.

3. Provide a Guide Description.

   • ​​​For accessibility reasons, all guides must have a description. This is what will appear under the guide name in search engines like Google. We recommend that you repurpose your learning outcomes into a sentence or two. See the Plan Your Guide page for information about how to write learning outcomes.

4. Select a Guide Type.

   • Course Guides are designed for a specific courses in conjunction with the course instructors.

   • Topic Guides are designed to help users find library resources on a particular subject or topic.

   • Internal Guides are designed for internal use. These guides will not appear on guides.library.stanford.edu or in search results. If this guide is published as public or private though, it will still be viewable by anyone with the URL.​

   • Template Guides are designed for others to copy and use as blueprints. These guides will not appear on guides.library.stanford.edu or in search results. If this guide is published as public or private though, it will still be viewable by anyone with the URL.​

5. Select your group from the Guide Assignment or leave it set to "do not assign a group".

6. You can enter a Password that users will have to enter before viewing your guide.

7. Choose to Share Guide Content or opt out. 

   • No prevents any user from creating a copy of your guide. 

   • Internal allows other librarians at Stanford to copy your guide. 

   • Community allows anyone with a LibGuides subscription to copy your guide.

   • We recommend that you make your content reusable whenever possible! Being able to reuse content is what makes LibGuides great.

8. Click the Create Guide button.

1. From the guide editing page, select the Pencil icon next to the Subjects field. Choose the appropriate subjects from the dropdown menu that appears and click the Save button when you are done.

   • If there are no appropriate subjects, leave this field blank. You can always use tags instead.

2. Select the pencil icon next to the Tags. Type in relevant tags. Separate each tag with a comma, and hit the OK button.

3. Select the pencil icon next to the URL.

   • Create a human-readable URL for your guide, one that a user could remember rather than the randomly assigned string.

1. While editing your guide, click on the Add New Page button on the left-hand side of the page, where your navigation bar will be.

2. Select Regular from the Page Type dropdown menu.

   • Do not select Blog. The Stanford Libraries blog is available through Drupal and very well established. We do not want to create a second blog stream through LibGuides

   • Do not select Discussion. We have not had the opportunity to test the Discussion page type. If you have a potential use case for this page type, please reach out to the group first.

3. ​​Enter a Page Name.

   • Use action words. It will help you organize the content around the user's needs rather than material format. Eliminate "ing" and use the shorter form of the verb. For example, "Search tools" is preferable to "Tools for searching".

   • Be concise yet descriptive. Use sentence case and no punctuation. ?" and ";" are the only exceptions.

4. Enter a Description.

5. Select top-level page from the Position dropdown menu.

6. Save.

7. After you create the page, assign a page URL. Click the Pencil icon next to the Page URL, which is located at the top of the page under the guide metadata.

8. You can go back and edit the page properties, delete the page, and more at any time, by going into the Page Settings.

   • ​A guide should have seven pages or less. If you need more, you may be trying to put too much material into your guide. Remember that short term memory is limited and learning cannot take place when patrons are overwhelmed with information. Are you including more information than a user will need to achieve the learning outcomes you wrote?

   • Every guide final page should be a page titled "Help" that contains additional resources and information about how users can follow-up and who they can contact if they have questions. For an example, see this guides Help page.

1. While editing your guide, click on the page you want to edit in your guide's navigation menu (i.e. tabs or side-navigation). Click the  Add Box link at the bottom of the column where you want the box to go. For example, to add a box to Column 1, click on  Add Box - Column 2.

2. In the Add New Box window, you can Reuse Existing Box or Create New Box.

   • Reuse existing content when you can from your own guides or from other guides. One of the pluses of LibGuides is the ability reuse content, like boxes. It might not always be possible to reuse the exact some box, but you can also always copy, paste, and make changes. 

3.  Enter the title for your box in the Box Name field.

   • Use action words. It will help you organize the content around the user's needs rather than material format. Eliminate "ing" and use the shorter form of the verb. For example, "Search tools" is preferable to "Tools for searching".

   • Be concise yet descriptive. Use sentence case and no punctuation. ?" and ";" are the only exceptions.

4. If you are creating a new box, select Standard, Tabbed, Gallery, or Profile from the Type dropdown.

   • A Standard box is flat, in the sense that the content you add displays directly on the page.

   • A Tabbed box allows you to divide content in a box across multiple tabs.

   • You can create galleries of images, books, databases, and more using the Gallery box type. 

   • As a guide author, you have a Profile box that you can add to let patrons know you created a guide and how to get in touch with you. We ask that you include your profile box on the first page of every guide you create, under the navigation. Boxes under the navigation will disappear when the guide is displayed on a small screen, which is why we ask that you also include a Help page in your guide. Please do not add any other boxes under the navigation.

5. From the Position dropdown, select where in the column the new box should be added.

6. If you would like to hide this box from public view until it is ready, select the Draft Mode checkbox.

7. Click the Save button.