UBC LibGuides: Guidelines

LibGuides accounts are issued to current employees:

• Librarians (CWL login) receive a regular account, which can add and delete guides
• Branch accounts (LibApps login) are also regular and allow for updating of guides during absences and help to facilitate reviews of guides
• Staff (CWL login) receive an editor account which can be added to any guide, as appropriate
• Students (LibApps login) are not issued individual accounts, but use branch student accounts which are at the editor level and can be added to any guide, as appropriate
• Admin accounts are issued based on roles

Full details on Accounts, including branch and student-branch account details, are found in the LibGuides CMS Guidelines

New individual employee accounts can be requested through this form

LibGuides are intended to support students with library instructional content. All LibGuides must have clear contact information for one of the following:

• A librarian
• Multiple librarians (by campus or to represent shared responsibilities)
• A team or branch (Ex. Teaching and Learning Team or David Lam Library)
• A general library contact such as those listed on the AskUs portal

Best practice: Include an AskAway chat widget in addition to the specific contacts above (listed in reusable objects)

Adding your profile to a LibGuide

1. Add a page, at the bottom of your side navigation menu, labelled "Contact for research help"
   • This is the singular location on a guide where a profile box/AskAway should be located
2. Add/Edit the friendly URL by adding "contact" to the base URL
3. Within this page, insert your profile box, and the boxes of other librarians that provide support
   • Instructions for adding a profile box
   • Instructions for editing a profile box
   • If there are colleagues from other institutions that are co-responsible for instruction in a distributed program (or similar) they can have a LibGuides account and you can insert their profile box as you would for a guide with multiple UBC librarians

Editing your profile in LibApps

1. Your profile name auto-populates from within LibApps, the Springshare module that applies to accounts for all of their products
   • To edit your Profile Box (or Profile Page) navigate to: LibApps Home > My Profile
   • If there is an issue with how your name displays, submit a ticket to TDUX and it can be updated
2. When you are editing your profile box in LibApps, click on the tab near the top of the screen labelled Profile Page
   • On this page, disable the profile page. There two main reasons not to use this page
     1. it creates a "false directory" available at: https://guides.library.ubc.ca/prf.php
     2. it will only populate with guide that you own - not those that you edit. The majority of our guides are co-owned

Recommended LibApp Profile Settings

Profile box settings: https://library-ubc-ca.libapps.com/libapps/profile/box

1. Title: Label your profile box title with your job title and campus, Example: Biology Librarian, Vancouver campus
   • The same label will display everywhere you use your profile box, so consider a generic "Librarian" title, as the intent of this information is to provide students with brief context for why to contact you
   • It is possible to edit the title of the profile box on individual pages where it is inserted, so you can have a different title on each guide, if you want, but that is a manual update
2. Pronouns: If you want pronouns to display, enter them in the pronouns field provided
3. Photo: If you include a photo of yourself, we recommend the image dimensions be saved in 150 pixels by 150 pixels, then uploaded to LibGuides
   • the width of the profile box photo is set by the system to be 150 pixels; the height is not specified to preserve aspect ratio, but it is ideal if you upload a picture that is 150 pixels square
   • If you do not want a photo of yourself, choose from one of the following (the options below are not in a preferred order, they are all good options!)
     • character of yourself rather than real photo
     • branch photo (photos included below for reuse)
     • branch logo

Note: The profile box that you see on the backend of LibGuides does not have our custom formatting applied, the box will appear quite differently on a public facing guide

This section of the profile box settings includes a series of fields:

• Address: Consider what info a student actually needs, likely not your mailing address!
  • Option 1: leave blank
  • Option 2: 1871 West Mall (brief location info)
  • Option 3, if you have a specific office, include its building/room #. Example: Office: LIB 242
  • Option 4: Add your branch or unit with a link to it's website using the instructions in the Widgets Code box below. If using this option, do not add your address or branch here.
• Phone: Consider whether you ever get phone calls from students!
  • Option 1: leave blank
  • Option 2: include phone number
• Email address
  • Option 1: Enter your email address - we have reformatted the profile boxes so that the email address will display to end-users, rather than an "email us" button
  • Option 2: If you wish for your email address to link to your LTK web contact form instead of opening Outlook, use the instructions in the Widgets Code box below. If using this option, do not add your email here.
• Skype: do not use!
• Website/blog: do not use!
  • There are details below for adding a link to your branch website

• Only include links to branch or library social media, not to personal social media
• It is perfectly fine to leave all of these fields blank

We recommend adding links (if needed) using the code provided as a template. Add the links to the "Other Widget Code" box in this order and as needed (you may wish to use only one or all three depending on how you've filled out the other fields described above):

1. Add web contact form to email address instead of a link that opens Outlook:
   • Add this code to the "Other Widget Code" box: <a href="http://directory.library.ubc.ca/people/email/1097">helen.l.brown@ubc.ca</a>
   • Swap the bolded text for your email address and web form link (you can find the latter by clicking on the email displayed on your Library Toolkit LTK Directory page).
   • Make sure you do not have your email listed in the "Email Address" field as that will cause duplication.
2. Add a Schedule an appointment link:
   • Add this code to the "Other Widget Code" box: <a href="https://libcal.library.ubc.ca/appointments/sobol">Schedule an appointment</a>Label this link "Schedule an appointment"
   • Swap the bolded details with your LibCal appointment booking link.
3. Add a link to your Branch website:
   • Add this code to the "Other Widget Code" box: <a href="https://library.ok.ubc.ca/">Okanagan Library</a>
   • Swap the bolded details with the name and website of your branch or unit. 
   • Make sure you do not have your address listed in the "Address" field as that will cause duplication.

Example of using all three:

In "Other Widget Code" box added the following. Here is how it appears: https://guides.library.ubc.ca/fisheries/contact

Reusable photos in 150 x 150 pixels to be added to branch accounts and as an option in place of individual photos.

Asian Library

David Lam Library

IKBLC

Koerner Library

Law Library

MAA Library

Okanagan Library

Woodward Library

Xwi7xwa Library