Springshare Support Blog

We have added a new option for users creating a new Guide in LibGuides. Now you can choose to copy the style (and content) from an existing Guide and then work from there, rather than starting with a blank/empty Guide.
When you click on the “Create New Guide” link on the main admin page, you will see a new option – “Use Template From” and then a dropdown box of all current Guides in the system. You can pick the default “I want to start fresh” option, which will create a blank Guide, or select one of the existing Guides to copy its style and data into this new Guide you’re creating.

This new feature gives librarians the ability to create templates for new Guides in the system. This can speed up the creation of new content in LibGuides, and help preserve the uniform structure and form for Guides, if desired.

I am pleased to announce that we have launched another very neat, super-cool facebook application – LibGuides Librarian. If you are using LibGuides, either at your institution or on our demo system, you can now display your published Guides directly on your facebook profile. This is a great way to “show off” your Guides to the facebook community, and to drive traffic to LibGuides. The LibGuides Librarian application is another avenue for you to share your knowledge with the community, connect with patrons on facebook, and supply useful library content to social networks.

As an added bonus, people will be able to search your library catalog from your facebook profile. How cool is that???

Below is a screenshot of how the LibGuides Librarian app looks on a facebook profile (area between the arrows)

The application is not listed yet in the official facebook app directory (it will be under the “Education” category), but you can still add to your profile. Just log in to your facebook account first, and then paste the following URL in your browser – http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2409492434

Oh, and first reviews are already in – thanks Ellyssa!

We heard you – you wanted “friendlier” urls for your Guides. When you are talking to patrons (or need to put the Guide url on paper) it would be neat if your Guide could have a simple url, like http://libguidesdomain/education (for your Guide about Education resources) or http://libguidesdomain/comm230 (for your comm230 course Guide).

Now you can do just that! Here’s how: On your Guide admin page, click on the “status” link (next to the Guide title) and you will be able to define a custom url shortcut for this Guide. The only trick is that you can’t have the same url shortcut for two different guides on the same domain (i.e. at your library), so act fast before someone takes the keyword that you wanted so bad!

Here are few examples of friendly LibGuides urls:

http://demo.libguides.com/faq

http://demo.libguides.com/libguides-intro

The image below shows the location of the friendly/custom url option on your Guide admin page. Enjoy!

We have launched another important feature in LibGuides – the ability to make an exact copy of any content box in the system. This way you can add or modify the copied box without affecting the original. This new feature, in addition to the ability to link to boxes, speeds up the process of creating new Guides and pages – you can simply link to any previously created box in the system, or you can create an exact copy and then make changes/additions to it.

Guide owners will now be notified via email every time a user posts a comment on one of their pages. This way the Guide owners can follow and track the conversation on comment boards without having to log on to their Guide all the time.