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LibGuides Manual

Reviewing Process

There are two types of reviewing that take place for every new LibGuide: Content (Peer) Review and Technical Review. Content review can be done within the division (LibGuides group), or can broaden to include review and feedback from peers outside of the division. It can be extremely useful to have colleagues at the Library who are unfamiliar with the subject of your guide give you feedback on your presentation of that content. Content review should include grammar and spell checking, general editorial review, and attention to consistency of language throughout the guide.

Technical review should happen next. Each “group” in LibGuides should have at least one internal technical reviewer who is trained to do a thorough check of each guide – this should be done prior to moving the guide into “review” status (e.g., while it is still “unpublished”). This technical review should evaluate the guide for adherence to the Library of Congress LibGuides and Web standards, checking “under the hood” for clean coding, validating the use of standard boilerplate language (like for “Books from the Catalog”), checking all friendly URLs, and checking the quality of the guide’s title, description, subjects, and tags. A technical reviewer should also look for opportunities to establish new reusable boxes for common elements used by their division, and make sure that reusable boxes and pages from the Library’s main guide, “Ask a Librarian, Authorship, and other Reusable Boxes for Library of Congress Guides” are being mapped correctly.

Once the guide is ready for FINAL technical review, it should be submitted to the Publishing Workflow, by changing the guide status to: “Submitted for Review.” At that point a smaller group of designated reviewers will check the guide prior to publishing.  If a guide will need a redirect (from an older HTML-based webpage), that information should be included in the notes when the guide is submitted for final review.

Publication

Once a guide has been approved, it will be published. Upon publication, the owner and reviewer will review the guide to ensure it looks and functions as expected. A link to the guide will then be added to the general directory of the Library's Research Guides. Once the guide has been published, the final reviewer should enter the guide into the LibGuides Tracking Chart, on the LCSG LibGuides Tracking Confluence page (located under Business Analysis Team-->LibApps-->LibGuides).

Maintenance

The guide’s owner will be responsible for maintaining the guide, ensuring that content remains accurate, broken links are corrected, and new content is added when appropriate. The owner will receive and reply to any content-related error reports associated with the guide submitted by the public or by Library staff.

Publishing Workflow

  • The guide creator will follow the steps below (for more information, view Springshare Help Center's "Publishing Workflow" page):
    • Click on Unpublished  and choose Submit for Review from the dropdown list.
    • Click Update Guide Status on the Guide status window. You can also add an optional message to let the reviewers know what has been updated.
    • After submitting your guide for review the guide status will change to Submitted for Review.
    • If your guide doesn't need any changes/edits, you will receive an email indicating that the guide review is complete and that your guide has been published. If your guide needs to be revised, a reviewer will contact you directly about making the necessary changes.

    • If you add new boxes or pages to a published guide, put those boxes in "draft" mode or change the page visibility setting to "hide from public view" . Notify your division's reviewer of the new content.  The designated reviewer will "unhide"  the box or page after reviewing the changes.   

      Tip: When you are submitting changes to a published guide for review, leave a brief message detailing the changes you made. This will help to expedite the process for the reviewer.

  • Reviewers will follow the steps in the LibGuides' Publishing Workflow to access and review the guide:
    • Once a guide creator has submitted their guide for review, all Authorized Reviewers will receive an email notifying them that a guide has been submitted for review.  Note: reviewers should only review the guides for their groups.  Reviewers should not delete the notices in the “Needs Your Attention” box (since this would delete the notices for everyone)
    • The email provides the reviewer with a link to the submitted guide and to the Publishing Workflow page.
    • Reviewers will also be notified of any submitted guides on their LibGuides Dashboard.
    • Reviewers will see the submitted guide (and any guides in need of review) in the Guides Pending Review section.
    • You can see the name of the guide, guide owner, date of submission, any notes added by the owner upon submission, and the group (if one has been assigned).
    • Click on the box & pencil icon () in the Actions column to navigate to the guide and start reviewing.
    • Proceed with reviewing the guide. 
    • If you are not satisfied with the guide, you can change the guide status back to Unpublished and notify the guide owner of the changes that need to be made.
    • If you are satisfied with the guide and no further edits are necessary, update the guide's status to published.
    • To update the guide's status to "published" the reviewer will: select Publication Status > Select Published> Click on Save
    • Once the guide has been published, the reviewer should enter the guide into the LibGuides Tracking Chart, on the LCSG LibGuides Tracking Confluence page (located under Business Analysis Team-->LibApps-->LibGuides). If the reviewer needs any assistance in making this entry, please contact [email protected].