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UBC LibGuides: Guidelines

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

UBC LibGuide Types, Groups, Subjects & Tags

We are using groups and subjects to organize our guides. All guides are browseable from the portal page due to this organizational structure

  • Each guide must have a type: Subject or Course 
    • You can select a type when creating a new guide or edit the type on an existing guide through a lookup that appears at the top of the screen
  • Each guide must belong to a group: these are the 15 categories that display on the portal page (detailed below)
  • Many (but not all) of the guides also use subjects in order to display within categories within a group
  • Additionally, tags are freeform keywords that influence the LibGuides relevancy-based search results

Note: This system of organization was collaboratively developed in 2024/25, and is expected to require revision over time. Requests for modification  should be sent to Lib-lg@lists.ubc.ca for review by the LibGuides CMS Team.

How the LibGuides Search Works

The guidelines on this page are meant to help improve the search results that users retrieve within LibGuides.

The LibGuides search results are arranged by relevancy with equal weight given to the page name, page content and description, the guide name, guide description, any regular or friendly URLs associated with the page and guide, as well as the guide owner name, subjects, and tags.

1. Type: Subject or Course

  • Each guide must have a type: Subject or Course 
    • You can select the type when creating a new guide, or you can edit it anytime from within a guide (Screenshots forthcoming)

 

2. Group: 15 Options

  • Each guide must belong to a group (the portal page shows all groups)
    • You can select the group when creating a new guide, or you can edit the group anytime from within a guide (Screenshots coming)

 

  • Note: these instructions only apply to guides that need to display in more than one group. The LibGuides platform is designed so that a guide can only live in one group. To help students locate our guides in different contexts, we have created a workaround:
    1. Locate the guide that you want to display in more than one group and copy its URL
    2. Create a new guide 
    3. Add the guide to the type and group that you want it to appear in
    4. Save the guide with the same title as the existing guide
    5. Use the URL redirect tool to point to the existing guide (use the URL from step 1)
    6. Add any applicable subjects
    7. Publish the guide
      1. This is just a placeholder for the redirection so that the guide "displays" in more than one group, the only thing that displays publicly is the title

4. Tags

Tags are free text keywords that impact the internal LibGuides search results. When you start typing tags, you will be presented with existing tags in the system, which you can select from. It is also possible to create widgets based on tags to display a unique subset of guides.

Use tags sparingly!

  • They are most useful for acronyms, course codes, abbreviations of program names and synonyms for the guide title.
  • There is no need to duplicate keywords that are in the guide, or the guide title - those are already included in the search parameters.