Web design borrows from psychology and sociology and is guided by usability and accessibility.
The St. Thomas Libraries strives to make user-centered, relevant content accessible on multiple platforms.
Designs change over time to keep pace with current aesthetics and mental models. As populations evolve so must the website.
When developing your guides it is important to note the order items will appear on your page when viewing on a mobile device.
In multi-column layouts everything will appear in a single column which the user will scroll through. Therefore it is important to note that column 1 will come first, column 2 will come second, and column 3 will come last.
Make sure that you have content in a logical order. Just because the center column is large, doesn't mean it will show to users first. If your most important information is in that column, you may want to choose a different layout that allows your most important information to be in your prominent column on both mobile and desktop devices.
You can test this out by resizing your browser window so that it is narrow.
If your guide is specific to a class or course, the guide type should be "Course"
You should refrain from using the subject of "Course guides" as that will be retired.
At this time do not worry about General, Subject, or Topics. Use these as you have in the past. We'll organize and define these terms at a later date.
Choose the subject that most relates to your course or guide.
The subject list is currently long so we need to be careful about adding new subjects, especially subjects that only contain one or two guides.
Please do not list a guide in all possible subjects that it might seem fit to be included. It should only be a member of the primary subject. If it covers more than 2 subjects it might be best to be broken up, re-written, or listed under a more general subject like How-To or Community.
Guides of type "Course" should not be listed under Community or How-To.
You'll notice 3 new, special subjects:
If you list a guide in the Featured subject, it will appear in the Featured section of the LibGuides homepage. If you list a guide as "How-To" it will appear in the How-To section.
Guides of type "Course" should not be listed under Community or How-To.
You can feature a guide on the Research Guides homepage by assigning it to the Featured subject. It is also recommended that you submit an image to go with it.
