Skip to Main Content

UConn Library's LibGuides Standards and Best Practices — Topic Guides

A guide to help you create and edit your subject, course, topic and general purpose guides

Guidelines for Topic Guides

Topic guides are excellent to address current events, hot topics, drill down on a specific sub-subject or to highlight archival collections or other resources good to research a particular topic. Topic should still be created with a pedagogical purpose in mind. The guide should not duplicate content in another existing guide. Authors should adhere to general design principles to ensure consistency with the rest of the site.

 

  • Rationale: Topic is not reflected in any of the subject guides. Topic is about important and/or relevant current events or hot topics that are researched, taught or are important to the university.
  • Purpose: Make sure that the main/home page explain the purpose of the guide to the users and what to expect to find in the guide
  • Avoid Duplication and Contextualize the content of your topic guide: Topic guides must contextualize the information of the topic guide with library resources and advice on how to research the main guide topic and related topics.

► When using Shared Content Boxes, ensure the information is contextualized by pairing shared content boxes with specific advice, examples or resources related to the topic of the guide.

► If listing databases, ensure there is some contextual information and/or advice to explain how those databases are useful to research the topic. Keywords or subject headings (linked to searches in Primo) are good ways to contextualize the information in the guide.

► Consider linking to similar guides (from UConn Library or other libraries) if appropriate.

  • Profile: a profile box is not required for this guide, but you are welcome to add one if you like.
  • Guide Title: Include the word "Topic" at the beginning of the title (See Guide Types & Naming Standards for details)

See the following examples of topic guides for inspiration:

Topic guide that supports the course, Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans (EBV), and any student entrepreneur interested in starting a new business or developing a product.

Tools to learn how to identify a story's authority, authenticity and reliability.

Creative Commons  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial 4.0 International License. | Details and Exceptions