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UBC LibGuides: Guidelines

Guidelines and best practices for the creation and management of guides at UBC Library

Overview of UBC LibGuides

This guide has been created by the LibGuides CMS Team for library employees at UBC.  

User experience and digital accessibility have been prioritized in creating the content in this guide. This guide includes a set of guidelines, best practices, templates and reusable content to facilitate the stewardship of all guides. 

  • All internal documentation regarding the work of the LibGuides CMS Team is found on Confluence.
  • Questions about content on this guide can be directed to barbara.sobol@ubc.ca, as Chair of the LibGuides CMS Team, or to the entire team at: Lib-lg@lists.ubc.ca 

Guidelines are the agreed upon "rules" for LibGuides, developed by the LibGuides CMS Team through consultation. Best practices reflect optional ways to implement the guidelines recognizing the need for flexibility.

What are LibGuides? How do I login?

LibGuides:

  • provide a web venue for the sharing of current instructional content in any of the following categories: subjects, courses/programs, thematic topics, collections, formats, tools/resources, liaison outreach, and evaluative or literacy skills
  • provide users with relevant library contacts on both campuses, as appropriate
  • are intended for students as the primary audience. Secondary audiences include faculty, library employees at UBC, library employees at other institutions who provision AskAway, and non-affiliated researchers.

Logging in to the LibGuides dashboard:

System Settings

The LibGuides CMS team details all changes to system settings on Confluence

In brief:

  • All accessibility settings have been enabled including link targets set to open in the same window
  • Custom formatting impacts many aspects of the display
  • Search engine indexing is enabled and the search box on a single guide is set to search just that guide, not the system
  • Side navigation is the only layout option for new guides
  • The "proxy" settings for various types of links includes an Open Athens prepend
  • All guides are set to "share" within the LibGuides community which means guide owners may get requests from any other LibGuides customers to copy content
  • Effective June 2025, a Creative Commons license has been applied to all guides in the footer. See Scholarly Communications on Confluence for more detail