We are gearing up for big LibGuides updates this fall, and while you wait, we have a few smaller features to share.
We have improved the behavior of Search Boxes so that their scope can be changed based on your preferences. Folks who are using a guide as their system homepage don’t have to worry—if we detect a redirect URL, the search box on your custom guide will automatically search the entire system.
Currently, search boxes in a guide find pages just within that guide; same for groups. Go to System Settings > General > Search Options to specify the behavior of the search box in guides:
CMS user? We have your groups covered, too! Specify the behavior of the search box on the group homepage as well as for the guides in the group:
Accessibility Updates
Almost all—if not all—of our LibGuides updates for the rest of this year will include features that improve the web accessibility of LibGuides. In this code release, we have made book covers and the “Back to Top” page control accessible. When you’re on the A-Z page, the page title always reflects the page contents. See what we mean by clicking on a letter, or narrowing by search or filter.
We also removed H1 and H2 as heading choices in the Rich Text Editor. Why? Because header elements such as H1, H2, H3, etc., are meant to convey the hierarchy of information. Thus, the Guide title is the H1, Box titles are H2, and any headings within Rich Text content will begin with H3 to maintain that hierarchy. (Hint: if you really want to, you can click the source button and change an h3 to an h2 or h1, but we don’t recommend it.)
Private Guides Available for Copying
We’ve added a couple of frequently-requested features to the process of creating a guide based on a different guide. It’s now possible to copy a guide if you know the URL, and Private guides are also findable. We heard from a lot of you that guides are often set to the Private status so that they are still freely-accessible and for the express purpose of sharing them as templates for other libraries. To create a guide using another guide as a template, click Create Guide, then choose whether you want a guide from your system or the LibGuides community. Search by keyword, or if you know the URL, just paste it in and voila!
Bugfixes
We are swatting small bugs along the way, and this release is no different! A bug cropped up preventing the A-Z import/update from working, so we fixed that, and we’ve fixed the loophole that allowed folks to accidentally navigate away from an unsaved Discussion Board post.
These are all great updates. Thank you for being so responsive.
Thanks for this information! I’m still wondering, is there a way to hide the search box like in the V1 system of LibGuides? The old code I had used then does not work in the new system. Thanks!
Hi, Sara!
There are a couple of ways to hide the search box, depending on what you’d like to do and how your system is set up. It’s possible to hide the box with some custom CSS, or by editing the guide pages templates–have you used either of those? Would you kindly submit a ticket from your LibGuides 2 system and include more details about what you’d like to do? Click the Support tab on any edit-side page to send us a question, or email us at support@springshare.com. 🙂