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Best Practices for LibGuides at UCLA

Suggestions and guidelines for using LibGuides to best effect in the UCLA Library.

Guide Titles and Descriptions

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The Title Rule of Thumb

For the titles of your guides, pages, and boxes, try running this test: Take out each word or phrase one by one. If the meaning of the title doesn't substantially change, then you didn't need that word.

Some specific things to watch out for:

  • "Finding X"
  • "Research Materials"
  • "Information on..."
  • "Recommended Resources"

These phrases are only needed if you need to make a distinction with other sections of your guide that deal with "Losing X," "Non-Research Materials," "Misinformation," and "Resources to Avoid."

Titles are important. It's the first thing someone sees about your guide, and often the only information they'll have to decide whether or not this is the right guide to use.

Keep your titles short and simple. The user is on a page with the words "UCLA Library" and "Research Guides" prominanetly splashed across the top of every page, so don't repeat them in your title. Ditto for "find," "research materials," "sources," and other words that are obvious from the context. 99% of the time you can just use the name of the subject or course. That says everything the user needs to know and makes it far easier to find in an A-Z list.

The Description field should also be used sparingly. Use descriptions to clarify the guide's scope or intended audience—again, information that will help potential readers decide whether or not this is the right guide. Don't waste their time with descriptions like "This guide contains a list of online and print resources which will help students and researchers in the field of Zoology." That says nothing that was not already implicit in the one word title "Zoology," unless you need that information to distinguish the guide from another guide named "Zoology" that differs in its content, audience, or scope.

Guidelines for Titles of All-Sessions Course Guides

"All-sessions" course guides are guides which apply to all instances of a specific numbered UCLA course; they may change over time to reflect changes in the curriculum, but the same guide works for all sections and quarters. All-sessions course guides should be named using the following pattern:

  • Chemistry 161A: Plant Biochemistry

Use the subject, number, and title exactly as given in the General Catalog. However, you may drop unnecessary letters like initial C or M that may confuse proper sorting, though they should be kept if in common use (like GE Cluster M1, which is never called "GE Cluster 1"). You may also drop following letters like W if they don't serve to distinguish the course from another.

While we don't use the abbreviations in the Schedule of Classes, a few common abbreviations for particularly long program names are used (see list below). Especially long course guide titles can be shortened by taking out sub-titles or even dropping the entire descriptive name. In those cases the full course title should appear in the guide description.

Established Abbreviations

  • Chemistry and Biochemistry -> Chemistry
  • Chicana and Chicano Studies -> Chicana/o Studies
  • Clusters -> Cluster
  • Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Studies -> LGBTQ Studies

Guides for Course Sequences

Combined guides for AB or ABC course sequences should use just the base course number. Example:

  • Cluster 21: History of Modern Thought

Special exceptions may apply if a series has a variant name in common use (the English "10 series").

Guides for Cross-Listed Courses, Examples

Try not to repeat shared elements. As an alternative, just list one course in the title and add a note in the guide description "Same as Art History 101A" (as done in the General Catalog).

  • Applied Linguistics 115B/215B: Computer-Enhanced Language Learning and Teaching
  • LGBT Studies / Women's Studies 114: Introduction to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies

Guidelines for Some-Sessions Course Guides

"Some-sessions" course guides apply only to specific offerings of a numbered course, usually a specific quarter, but sometimes also one or more specific sections; this is typical for seminar courses, special topic courses, or courses with multiple instructors who require customized content. Even if your course guide will be re-used for future quarters, if it only applies to some sections and/or quarters of Subject 101 then it's a "some-sessions" guide and should be re-named and re-registered every quarter.

"Some-sessions" course guides follow the same basic naming conventions as "all-sessions" course guides, but have some additional rules to indicate their more restricted scope.

  • The name must specify the quarter and year in parentheses at the end.
  • If the guide applies only to some sections during the quarter, then it must also specify the section (by section number or instructor's last name) after the quarter. (Instructors' names may also be added optionally, even when not required.)
  • If the course is a seminar course, use the special topic title (exactly as given in the Schedule of Classes) in place of the broader course title.

Examples

  • History 97D: American's Empires (Winter 2011)
  • Cluster 21C: Lost in the Crowd? Mobs, Masses, and Multitudes in Modernity (Spring 2011, section 8)
    • alternative: drop "section 8", but change course number to "21C-8"
  • English Composition 3: English Composition, Rhetoric, and Language (Winter 2013, Wood)
  • Women's Studies 186 / History 187A: Global Feminism, 1850-Present (Winter 2010)

Publication Status

"Some-session" course guides should normally be unpublished or made private after the quarter is over.

Friendly URLs

Some guidelines for choosing friendly URLs:

  • All lower case.
  • Use abbreviations and patterns established by other guides.
  • Don't use abbreviations that might be easily mistaken for other guides.
  • If you must use multiple words for clarity, separate them with hyphens (not spaces or underscores).
  • Suggestion: For course guides, use the course abbreviation from the Schedule of Classes (without spaces or upper case)

You can also assign friendly URLs to individual pages.

Friendly URLs for subject category pages all end in "-guides". See http://guides.library.ucla.edu/sb.php.