Guidelines and Standards for Research Guides

A Course Guide is a research guide uniquely affiliated with a particular course or instructor at your campus.

When you are creating the guide, assign the appropriate Type/Group designation: 

1. Click on the pencil icon next to the Type/Group field.
2. Under Guide Type, select Course Guide.
3. Under Group, select your appropriate campus.

Once you publish the guide, it will automatically display within the Research Guides by Campus page. Please do NOT assign a 'Subject' affiliation to a course guide; you may assign tags. Assigning a 'Subject' will cause the course guide to display within the Research Guides by Subject listing.

The Guide Name or title will appear at the top of the guide and in all list of guides.

Use the following standards to name your course guide: 

1. Official course code: (ENG 111)
2. Official course name (College Composition I)
3. (Instructor's last name- (if applicable), plus first name in cases of common names or where multiple faculty within the same discipline have the same name. If the guide is to be used by multiple faculty teaching the same course, omit the faculty name.  You may include a course topic if applicable (Immigration, Argumentative, etc.)
4. Campus) (Alexandria, Annandale, Loudoun, Manassas, Medical Education, NOVA Online, Woodbridge)

Course guides should not include the semester or year since most instructors use the same assignments continuously.

Examples:

• ENG 111: College Composition I (Young, Lisa-Loudoun)
• ESL 33: Oral Communications I: Problem/Solution Presentation (Chan-Alexandria)
• PSY 201: Introduction to Psychology (Davies-Annandale)
• SOC 268: Social Problems - Alcoholism (Schill-Woodbridge)
• ESL 52: Reading III - October Sky (Alexandria)

Friendly URLs allow students and faculty to easily return to a guide without navigating via the course listings and allow for easy printing on handouts. Friendly URLs should follow the same naming and order standards as course guides, with the course name omitted. Brevity is key for friendly URLs, so include only essential information. Spaces and unusual punctuation cause problems in URLs and are to be avoided. The URL does not affect sorting or organization.

You can assign/edit a friendly URL within the course guide and its pages.

Guide friendly URL:

1. Click on the pencil icon next to the URL field.
2. Enter your course code (subject and course number), punctuation, and instructor last name or topic (include an additional detail beyond the course code since all campuses share the same course codes and there needs to be differentiation).

Recommended punctuation: hyphens (-)

Recommended case:  lowercase letters

Examples:

• https://libguides.nvcc.edu/chm102-chesky
• https://libguides.nvcc.edu/eng111-lisayoung
• https://libguides.nvcc.edu/eng111-monroe-globalfoodways
• https://libguides.nvcc.edu/geo210-online
• https://libguides.nvcc.edu/evidence-based-practice

Guide friendly URL for pages:

1. Click on the pencil icon next to the URL field on the page to be edited.
2. Enter the name of the page. Page names can be shortened in the Friendly URL if necessary.  Do not use any punctuation or dashes

Recommended case:  lowercase letters

Examples:

• https://libguides.nvcc.edu/english/articles
• https://libguides.nvcc.edu/psychology/citingsources

All course guides should follow the navigation layout, style, and content standards:

Guide Navigation Layout:

1. Click on the Guide Layout/Picture Icon dropdown menu. 
2. Click on Guide Navigation Layout.
3. Select NOVA Default - Side-Nav w/o Search Box.  
4. Check the box for 'Show all subpages in side navigation'.
5. Check the box for 'Showbox-level navigation for selected page'.
6. Click Save.

Style:

• Font Name should remain on the default setting.
• Font Size should remain on the default setting.
• Use Heading 3 for headings as structural elements.

Content: 

• Course Guide Description: Must include at minimum Direct comments to [librarian name], [librarian email address] or [campus library email address]. You may also include your personal librarian profile box in the guide.
• Reuse Existing Box/Mapped boxes: Mapped boxes are linked to the original box. As the original box is updated, the changes will be reflected automatically in the mapped version.
  • Map the following boxes from the [LWC] NOVA Web Assets by Libraries LTS guide:
    • Search the Library Catalog
    • Need Help?
    • Library Navigation
  • Map the following boxes from the Template: Subject Guide Template:
    • MLA Citation Style
    • APA Citation Style
    • Chicago/Turabian Citation Style
• Add Databases from the A-Z Database List: As the databases are centrally managed in our A-Z Database List, any changes to a database (such as its URL) will automatically be reflected in every guide where the database is being used.
• NOVA Libraries Video Tutorials: Map video tutorials from the guide: https://libguides.nvcc.edu/video-tutorials. Any updates to a video will automatically be reflected in every guide where the video is being used.
• Images and Graphics: Limit the amount of images and graphics unless relevant to the content or focus of the guide.
• Additional Library Content: May be added as necessary and tailored for the course assignment, student needs, and faculty requests.

Every Canvas course has a “Library Resources” link in the navigation menu. By default, the 'Library Resources' links out to a general NOVA Libraries guide. Adding LTI Metadata to your course guide allows you to have your course guide connected to specific campus sections/courses; the LibGuides LTI Automagic implementation works by matching metadata in your libguides to course ID numbers.

The basic elements of the metadata you will add to your guides are: 

Metadata name: lti

Metadata value: NV280.SUBJECT.COURSE.SECTION [See the table below with examples]

Important notes about LTI metadata:

• The metadata value will always begin with NV280, our institution code
• You need punctuation between each value (.)
• More specific metadata trumps less specific metadata 

• You can connect one guide to many different sections. Typically this will require you to enter multiple lines of LTI metadata. It’s fine for one guide to have many lines of LTI metadata!

Examples of metadata values:

Instructions for adding LTI metadata:

1. Click on the Guide Information/Wheel Icon dropdown menu. 
2. Click on Guide Metadata.
3. Select the second tab, Custom Metadata.
4. Click Empty in the name field.
5. Enter lti in the name field and click the blue check mark.
6. Click Empty in the value field.
7. Enter the appropriate metadata in the value field: NV280.SUBJECT.COURSE.SECTION and click the blue check mark to save.

NOTE: The guide must be published to display in the Canvas course.

All course guides should follow the maintenance standards and guidelines:

• Before each Semester:
  • Review all course guides and add/edit LTI metadata.
  • Review all course guides to ensure content is up-to-date and relevant; add new resources if needed, contact the instructor for assignment updates, etc.
  • Publish any new or updated guides.
• After each Semester:
  • Set your course guides to Private if the course/instructor is not using the guide. Private guides are removed from the campus listing, which helps prevent clutter each semester.
  • Set your course guide to Unpublished if you would like to extensively edit the guide before republishing it.
• Semi-Annually:
  • Use the LibGuides Link Checker tool to ensure that all links are active; websites change frequently so you may need to update URLs or replace them with a different resource. 
  • Review course guide usage stats. 
  • Review all course guide assets to check for 0 mapping count and/or duplication.
  • If a course guide was created for a class or program that is no longer taught or the instructor is no longer with the college, you can set the course guide to unpublished.