LibGuides Updates: Blogs, LTI, and more, oh my!

LibGuides version 2.1.10 is here, and with it come some huge and exciting features!

Many of you have asked for a long time for blogging capability in LibGuides, and we are delighted to tell you that blogs are here! We will be adding more features to blogs in the future, but our first step is to bring you a system-wide blog and the ability to add a blog page to each of your guides. Is there a blogging feature close to your heart? Click the Support tab on any of your LibGuides admin pages to let us know!

What’s a blog? It’s a web page containing posts—pieces of text content—that are arranged in chronological order, with the newest post at the top of the page. Your LibGuides system blog or a blog in a guide is a great way to share news, announcements, and other timely information with your users.

Blog Features

• Assign any of your LibGuides Subjects to posts
• Add Books from the Catalog & Database Assets directly into the posts
• Not ready to publish? No problem! Save as “unpublished”
• User comments (requires a LibApps login)
• Subscribe to blog posts via email
• Connect users to your social media profiles
• Link directly to a post or a set of posts by subject or month

System blog

Each LibGuides installation (for all LibGuides customers!) has one system-wide blog that has been added to your system. It’s disabled by default, but it’s simple to get started! Go to Content > Blog > Blog Management to enable your system blog.

By default, your system blog has the URL http://your_guides_URL.edu/blog. If you already have that friendly URL assigned somewhere, don’t worry! That page will not be affected until you turn on the system blog, which will give you time to reassign the existing page or guide a different friendly URL.

Once you’ve enabled your blog and created a post or two, add it to your system homepage by going to Admin > Look & Feel > Homepage > Customization > Homepage Boxes / Redirect. Click the Blog button to add it to the homepage sidebar boxes, then drag to your preferred location. Be sure to click Save!

Custom template alert! If you’re using a custom homepage template that does not use the {{content_boxes}} keyword, you will have to add the keyword {{content_box_blog}} to your template for the blog box to show on your homepage.

Guide blog page

Guides have a new blog page type that allows you to add a blog to any of your guides. These work similarly to the system blog—you’ll create posts that are in chronological order.

Just like with the System Blog, users can comment and subscribe, link directly to a post or a set of posts by subject or month, and they can link to the guide owner’s social media profiles.

New in Blog content—add Books & Databases directly into the post!

Blog posts aren’t necessarily like guide box content. They’re often time-sensitive pieces of content that don’t necessarily need a permanent space in your guides. Because of this, we added a quick way to add a new or existing book or an existing database asset to your posts.

Click the Book icon to insert a book’s information into your post. You can either add a new book or an existing book. If you add a new book, it is NOT added to your assets repository.

To add an existing database, click the A-Z icon.

New to image manager—add a one-time image and keyword searching

Want to add an image to a guide that you know you’ll never need again? Now you can! Prevent clutter in your Image Manager by unchecking the new option “Save this image in my Image Library for later use.”

Accessible sub-pages!

Accessibility is important to us here at Springshare, and several of you had reported that it was difficult to navigate with the keyboard when a guide contained sub-pages. Want to see it in action? Check out the Getting Started with LibGuides guide on our Support site (login required).

New sharing option!

When creating a guide, you can specify whether your fellow LibGuides authors can make copies of your content. “No” means “no,” they can’t 😃 and “Internal” means “yes” they can. Your content will only be available for copying to the LibGuides community at large if your system’s sharing setting is set to Community.

Smaller features and fixes…

• If you change the title of a mapped box, all mapped copies will get that reused title, unless a custom title has been specified.
• When you reuse a hidden page or box, that reused copy will be hidden by default. You can un-hide it as long as you have privileges to do so.
• Easier-to-use guide creation page: we’ve simplified the options on the Create Guide page and have added more on screen help to guide you through the process.
• Oops! Ever accidentally delete something you really wish you hadn’t? We have changed all the delete screens in LibGuides so that “Cancel” is the default button. This means that if you click to delete a guide then just press enter, you’ll just close the window rather than actually delete the guide. Rest easy. 😉

But wait, what about LTI?

Just a teaser! We are bringing huge new functionality to the LTI tools in LibGuides CMS. You’ll be able to create a library resources page inside your LMS as well as connect guides “automagically” to every course. We plan to roll these features out to everyone in the next several days. Watch this space for more info! 🙂