Introduction
At VCU, content governance of research guides is maintained by a workgroup referred to as the LibGuide Curators. That workgroup considered revisions to the guidelines and looked to other academic libraries for inspiration.1,2 What we found was that other libraries’ guidelines for research guides are often aligned with values and norms that are broadly accepted within a library unit or promoted at the school level. For the LibGuide Curators at VCU, our values centered around user experience (UX), accessibility, and a culture of care.
Our initial review of the existing LibGuides guidelines included mapping those guidelines to a specific set of UX factors. We categorized the guidelines using definitions for six categories that comprise the UX Honeycomb: useful, usable, desirable, findable, accessible, and credible.3 A seventh category captured guidelines that did not fall into those categories and were largely associated with using the LibGuides system. The guidelines had a strong emphasis on ensuring guides were findable, with 11 unique recommendations on this topic. The guidelines also had good coverage of information on usefulness –nine recommendations, and ten for usability. However, the guidelines provided far less information on ensuring guides were desirable, accessible, or credible; each category having only two guidelines mapped under them.
The UX-focused review elevated another important factor: how existing creators were already using LibGuides. To better understand how decisions were being made by the authors and to further refine the clarity of the guidance, the LibGuides curators conducted a series of focus groups with LibGuide authors at VCU Libraries. Ultimately, seeking the experiences of the people that our guidelines were to be developed for, rather than looking at policies and practices from other universities, allowed us to generate updated guidance for LibGuides responsive to the distinct culture at VCU Libraries.
Gathering Author Feedback
The LibGuides Curators conducted five online focus groups of five to eight participants each, largely based on organizational units within the libraries, paying attention to how responses differed from focus group to focus group. We began each focus group with a uniform presentation of various aspects of the LibGuides platform and some of our local practices in order to elicit responses and dialog. This included charts we created to give authors a snapshot of how LibGuides were organized, i.e. type (subject, topic, or general purpose), and shared, i.e. status (published, unpublished or private), at VCU Libraries as a whole, as well as unique pictures of their own departments’ guide usage. We also led each group in exercises to develop working definitions of jargon within the LibGuides platform, such as “status” and “type”. We recorded the audio, and collected responses in live discussion, chat input, and via a Jamboard. This information allowed us to reflect the words and understandings of our library colleagues in the development of our revised guidelines.
We compiled all data in a shared drive and next, the group moved onto selecting an analysis approach aligned with the goal of generating clear, actionable guidelines. With our practical orientation to analyzing focus group data, we adopted an open coding method with the goal of developing useful and meaningful guidelines.4 We then combined the contributions from participants from all the focus groups, and applied an open coding method to develop themes. The LibGuides Curators examined contributed text and notes from our sessions to compare and contrast across groups. In other words, if the majority of groups shared a theme regarding a particular guide status (published, unpublished, or private) or guide type (subject, course, topic, general), that theme informed the development of the working definitions presented below.
Defining Terms
Author Perceptions of Guide Status
We used our analysis of the focus groups to develop our working definitions of the three LibGuide statuses—published, unpublished, and private. We hoped to encourage consistency by clarifying what each guide status indicates regarding visibility and findability.
When asked to brainstorm words describing “published” guides, authors used the words, “active, available, findable, open to all.” LibGuides that have been published are discoverable on our website, and also through a web search.5 Therefore our guidelines define published guides as “easily discovered and accessed by anyone via internal or external searches.”
When asked about “unpublished” guides, authors used terms such as “in-progress, un-used, archival.” These guides cannot be viewed by anyone but authors and editors who are logged in to the system.5 Therefore our guidelines define “unpublished” guides as “in development or for personal use (e.g. a sandbox, a work in progress or a retired guide), and are not available to anyone but the owner.”
“Private” guides were an area of uncertainty for authors, who described them as “created for specific users, not indexed by search engines.” They are only accessible by anyone who has the URL.5 Our resulting definition of “Private” guides was “only accessible through a shared URL and cannot be found via internal or external searches.”
Authors’ perception of guide types
LibGuide types—general purpose, course, subject and topic—of LibGuides was another major area for developing working definitions. The type selected determines where it is accessed on our website. In order for the web pages where they are indexed to have a level of consistency that supports usability, authors need to select the most relevant type of guide.
Authors indicated that “general purpose” guides are best used for content such as: universal services, library tools, external tools, and user groups. Therefore, the new guidelines define “general purpose” guides as those consisting of information for “how to use tools or services and find specific kinds of resources that are relevant to all users.”
Authors universally use the “course” guide type for class-specific content, and our definition, derived from the focus groups, indicates that they are “specifically designed for a class or course of study.”
Authors create “subject” guides to support academic disciplines and research audiences.
Based on this, the “subject” working definition notes that these guides are “focused on research and resources for a particular subject or discipline.”
Authors associated “topic” guides with: interdisciplinary topics and patron groups.
We defined “topic” guides as “focused on a central topic, tool, or research area that is interdisciplinary or serves a unique program or group.”
Updating and Promoting the Guidelines
After the focus groups were concluded, we sent a brief follow-up survey asking participants which LibGuide statuses and types best describe the guides they author to ensure they had achieved a clear understanding. We also asked: which areas of guide creation and maintenance they could use more guidance on, what the best method(s) of communicating updates from the Curators would be, how they keep their guides updated, and whether the existing maintenance guidelines were reasonable. Once we had a draft of the revised guidelines, we shared them widely for an open comment period. We integrated all of the author feedback into the updated guidelines and subsequently wrote monthly blog posts to highlight specific elements of LibGuides creation. The blog posts were indexed on a staff intranet page for future reference.
Table 1 provides a summary of changes to the guidelines, highlighting structural changes and key enhancements. The new structure is more aligned with how authors build guides, starting with purpose and naming, then moving into development and sharing. Additionally, we streamlined redundant or overly segmented criteria into broader more actionable categories. The new guidelines overall structure is more like a manual whereas the former version was primarily a list. The first two sections encourage staff to consider more explicitly the target audience when devising a name and description the audience serves as a guiding objective for content development as well as improving discoverability. The sections titled “Elements” and “Status & Sharing” contain detailed technical information for using the platform and, while the scope was largely unchanged, we adopted the inclusion of illustrative examples. The original guidelines provided no examples or images from our existing guides. Now, most of the major elements are identified in marked up illustrations that are particularly helpful to staff who are new to the system. The final two sections have been oriented to encourage the use of tools and methods that can improve accessibility and the ongoing maintenance that is required of dynamic research guides. Ultimately, the revised guidelines are well suited to typical usage of our library staff while enhancing the design of more user-friendly content that aligns with our understanding of user experience, accessibility, and a culture of care.
Table 1
Key enhancements to the guidelines.
| ORIGINAL GUIDELINES | REVISED GUIDELINES | KEY ENHANCEMENTS |
|---|---|---|
| 1 Criteria for Creation | 1 Purpose of Guide | Focus on guide intent. |
| (Not present before) | 2 Name & Description | New section guiding effective, SEO (Search Engine Optimization)-friendly titles and summaries. |
| 2 Plan for Promotion of Guide | Integrated into Status & Sharing | |
| 3 Criteria for Design and Content | 3 Elements | More actionable; includes layout, types of assets, and inclusive design practices, with marked up examples. |
| 4 Status & Sharing | Emphasizes visibility, sharing settings, and retention or deletion. | |
| 4 Criteria for Maintenance | 5 Maintenance | Maintains focus on updates, but adds accessibility checks and content currency. |
| 5 Criteria for Deletion/Hiding | Integrated into Status & Sharing | Deletion/hiding is directly tied to system settings where this occurs. |
| 6 Curation | Integrated across sections | Emphasis is on the guidelines rather than the administrative tasks of the curator group. |
| 7 Resources | 6 Considerations for Any Web Content | New section with specific information on accessibility, inclusive writing, and universal design. |
We developed the revised guidelines at VCU Libraries through a participatory process that included input from LibGuide authors. This approach ensured that the guidelines were responsive to our content creators. Engagement in multiple formats also resulted in wide acceptance of the guidelines. While the content of our guidelines may not be readily transferable to other institutions, the participatory and inclusive process we used in developing these guides may be applicable in other contexts.
Notes
[1] Del Bosque, Darcy, and Sara E. Morris. “LibGuide Standards: Loose Regulations and Lax Enforcement.” The Reference Librarian 62, no. 1 (January 2, 2021): 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/02763877.2020.1862022.
[2] Howes, Lydia, Elizabeth Frakes, Yingying Zhang, Donna Baluchi, Carmin Smoot, and Nena Schvaneveldt. “Improving LibGuides at a Health Sciences Library: A Case Study.” Medical Reference Services Quarterly 43, no. 2 (April 2, 2024): 130–51. https://doi.org/10.1080/02763869.2024.2335138.
[4] Rosaline S. Barbour, “Analysing Focus Groups,” in Analysing Focus Groups, ed. U. Flick (SAGE Publications Ltd, 2014), 313–326. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781446282243.n21.
[5] Springshare, “Guides: How publication status, guide type, & group type affect a guide’s visibility.” Accessed July 3, 2025. https://ask.springshare.com/libguides/faq/1662.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the reviewers for their generous feedback.
Competing Interests
Erin Carrillo is a Virginia Libraries editor.