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CIS Libguide Style Guide: Guide Types and Names

Style guide for the creation of CIS libguides

Types

Besides assigning Subjects to your guide to facilitate discovery, you should also select an appropriate "guide type" for it. This will aids users in browsing through guides on the LibGuides home page. See definitions of different guide types below: 

Subject Guide: Use only for specific subjects such as Maths, science, history, geography etc.

Topic Guide: Use for UOI guides
Course Guide: guides specifically designed for a class (e.g. G1, for Exhibition, for Personal Project, Extended Essay etc. )
How To Guide: guides on how to use library tools and find specific kinds of materials that are relevant to all users.
Internal or Template Guide: guides that are made for training, posting internal documentation, or collecting linked assets/content items. Internal or Template guides are only viewable by users who have accounts in the system.

Names

There are two campuses at CIS and a number of sections in each campus. In order to avoid confusion and for consistency it is best that libguides follow a naming convention to distinguish between them.

All guides should be given a name, and each page within a guide should be given a short descriptive name in the page URL.

Guides for the whole school:

http://cis.libguides.com - followed by the name of the guide

e.g. http://cis.libguides.com/digitalcitizenship

Guides for either the TK or LKS campus (whole campus):

http://cis.libguides.com - followed by the campus name - followed by the name of the guide

e.g. http://cis.libguides.com/TK/findabook/

http://cis.libguides.com/LKS/findabook/

Guides for a specific section within a campus:

http://cis.libguides.com - followed by the campus and section - followed by guide name

Lakeside DP: http://cis.libguides.com/LKSDP/

Lakeside MYP: http://cis.libguides.com/LKSMYP/

Lakeside PYP: http://cis.libguides.com/LKSPYP/

TK PYP (whole campus is PYP): http://cis.libguides.com/TK/

General Guidelines

When naming your guides, pages or content boxes, keep it short, descriptive, and consistent. Below are some tips:

  • Keep titles short and descriptive: make sure the title summarizes its content. If the page includes links to websites, books, and journals, make sure the link says Recommended Resources instead of just Websites.
  • Use Title case for titles: this means only using capital letters for the principal words. Articles, conjunctions, and prepositions do not get capital letters unless they start the title.
  • Avoid library jargon: always consider your audience. Students are less likely to click on something that they don't understand.
  • Establish a clear purpose and navigation for the guide. If you want students to progress through your guide in a certain way, consider the following:
    • Rename the homepage from "Home" to "Start Here" or "Get Started."
    • Adding Prev/Next buttons (find this option from Guide Edit bar> Guide Layout (Image) Menu.)
    • Adding Step 1, Step 2 helpers to the names of your guide pages.