Day 1 - Baking Resource Accessibility and Branding into Your LibGuides with a Custom Blueprint Guide

Springy_Will · July 2023

Session information: https://training.springshare.com/springycamp/2023/accessibility-and-branding-libguides

The University of Georgia Law Library revamped its LibGuides site using Springshare tools and institutional branding resources. This presentation outlines the steps taken, from research guide inventories to rolling out the library's first blueprint guide. It covers archiving older guides, troubleshooting customized CSS, and utilizing subjects and keywords to enhance topical and patron-specific pages. Strategies for promoting electronic resources and measuring increased accessibility will also be shared.

Have any questions for Rachel Evans?

Post them here! 💬

Springy_Meg · August 2023

Here are some questions from the session: 🤓

From Heather: Do you have some standards around tagging and assigning subjects?
From Alli: How successful are you at having staff use the blueprint guide when creating new guides? We have one but struggle at folks actually using it.
From Katy: Why did you choose Side Nav? Is it considered more accessible?
From Maria: How do you archive guides? In a separate group?

rsevans203 · August 2023

Thanks Heather! To answer: Do you have some standards around tagging and assigning subjects? We do! We now encourage librarians to use existing subjects / tags rather than creating totally new ones. New ones need to be shared first with our law library multi-department instruction team for informal approval. We want to ensure at least a few guides can share the new tag so that hopefully we do not have a ton of subjects/tags that only apply to 1 guide.

rsevans203 · August 2023

Thanks Alli! To answer: How successful are you at having staff use the blueprint guide when
creating new guides? We have one but struggle at folks actually using it.

Alli, we also struggled getting folks to use the blueprint. It has taken 2 years to get librarians to adopt it more frequently. Luckily LibGuides notifies me as Blueprint Guide Owner and site admin each time the Blueprint Guide is re-used in any way by email!! This has been a great way to internally praise librarians who follow the procedure or use a best practice style box. I turn around and forward that email to the other librarians or the entire library listserv - this encourages the librarian who used the Blueprint to keep doing awesome work!! And also shows/reinforces the existence of the Blueprint to encourage others to follow the example and do it themselves. Getting library staff to embrace libguides versus librarians to has been tricky. We hope to do some more training in the coming year as a refresher - reminding folks about the Blueprint and also showing them how simple it can be to use it!

rsevans203 · August 2023

Thanks Katy! To answer: Why did you choose Side Nav? Is it considered more accessible?

Short answer is YES it is WAY more accessible across devices. We did a usability test a couple years ago on our catalog, libguides and discovery layer and learned a lot through that experience combined with the device types our big user groups have (Google Analytics helped us to gather the device and browser data!). As a web developer myself I also used some browser-based tools to view our libguides across various device types and browsers to see exactly what end-users see for tabs across the top versus side-nav.

Both Salt Lake Community College and Washington State Libraries have public-facing best practices for LibGuides that shares even more information on the improved accessibility and usability of Side-nav style.

https://libguides.slcc.edu/Accessibility/SideNavigation

https://libguides.libraries.wsu.edu/bestpractices/layout

rsevans203 · August 2023

Thanks Maria! To answer: How do you archive guides? In a separate group?

For us, we decided to preserve the look & feel in addition to the content by downloading PDF's of guides we wanted to archive. Screenshots are OK for look and feel, but PDFs can capture that along with retaining text-searchable content and in most cases the URLs of resources too.

We use this same method for other online and print materials we want to make digitally accessible even after they are sunsetted in our archives. We store most items in our Institutional Repository (Digital Commons). For items we do not need to make publicly available but might want to refer to for content in the future, we store those archived PDFs on an internal shared drive.

Essentially you "print" the guide you want to archive, and select to "save to PDF". Next you can choose to double check links are still functional and text is searchable (if not using Adobe Acrobat Pro can help with OCR-ing and checking accessibility). We also use a naming convention for these files to make locating archived PDFs of old libguides possible should we ever need it.

Lastly, we feel confident that we can delete those guides that are obsolete and archived!

Here is a shared document link to the documentation I created for our student workers to "archive" old guides: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aJaKk7FKK1Tq6UMa1O0av1HAAhxMJ_uAKxPVLJb2EaU/edit?usp=sharing

rsevans203 · August 2023

I think this link for the archiving guides doc is better! https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aJaKk7FKK1Tq6UMa1O0av1HAAhxMJ_uAKxPVLJb2EaU/edit?usp=sharing

rsevans203 · August 2023

Here is a document version in case google docs is tricky:

LibGuides Archive Project Procedure.pdf

rsevans203 · August 2023

And last but not least - the training link for learning how and why you should create your own Blueprint Guide for your library! https://training.springshare.com/libguides/blueprint-guides

Cybrarian · August 2023

@rsevans203 Can we copy your Blueprint guide? "steal" really. 😃

rsevans203 · August 2023

More on Side-Nav from NYU Libraries - "Side navigation and a single column format improves mobile
experience. It also makes navigating guides with lots of tabs and sub-pages much easier on all devices. "

https://guides.nyu.edu/nyu-libguide-accessibility/before-you-begin