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LibGuides Best Practices: Best Practices: Reusability

Reuse Content

Almost everything in the LibGuides system is reusable - guides, pages, boxes, and individual content items. It will save time and effort when creating your guides by reusing existing content. There are two kinds of reuse:

Mapping / linking Content

  • this means that your reused versions are tied to the original. Changes you make to the original will update any "mapped" version. This is great for things like library hours, contact information, database widgets, etc.

Copying Content

  • the copied version is independent from the original. If you change one, it doesn't change the other.

 

Reusability by Libguide Content
  Map Copy
Guides NO YES
Pages YES YES
Boxes YES YES
Databases YES NO

Other Content Items (Widgets, Book, etc.)

YES YES

 

Storage Guide

Consider Setting Up a "Storage Guide" or "Blueprint Guide"

  • Storage Guide is simply a place for you to put pages & boxes that you can reuse it again in different guides.

Create Once, Edit Once: Avoid Duplicate Assets

When reusing content, keep in mind that Mapping/Linking is better than Copying because it's easier to maintain consistency and currency of your guide content. It is suggested that you:

  • Go to the Assets library (Content>Assets) to review and manage content assets in all of your guides, including: links, RSS feeds, documents, books, media/widget...etc.
  • Deduplicate Assets: Type your name in the Owner column to sort and find all the assets owned (created) by you. If you found duplicate assets:
    • Find the duplicate(s) and click on the number in the Guide Count column.
    • Click on the guide title to go to the guide.
    • Remove the duplicate asset from the guide.
    • Add the correct asset by reusing the existing links or other asset to the guide.
    • Go back to the assets page and repeat this process until the Guide Count of the duplicate asset(s) is at 0.
    • Delete the duplicate asset(s) from the assets page.

Contact Your Librarian

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Mollie Peuler
she/her
Contact:
Belk Library
828-262-8413