Library Guides Life Cycle: Ongoing Maintenance

Maintenance and curation of guides occurs both as a formal process as well as a continuous improvement. The Subject and Support Guide FIT Review sub group co-ordinates a regular formal maintenance program for all guides, liaising with the Library Network Leads, Chief Editors and Editors to ensure this is done in a timely manner. 

The Review team undertake an annual maintenance review of all Library Subject, Higher Education and General Guides that have been published for over six months to ensure that they:

• Comply with any changes or updates in the Standards and Guidelines guide
• Have no broken links or content that no longer functions

The Review team will notify guide chief editors in advance of the review to allow time for the guides to be looked at by the editing team ahead of the maintenance review. Once complete the Review team will send the cheif guide editor feedback on any changes that are required. The chief editor is then required to notify the Review team when the changes have been made to the guide.

For more information on the Review process:

• Look for outdated material
• Have new editions or new resources been purchased?

Course structures and subject outlines

Resources

If you have any questions or need any support to maintain your guide, please contact the LibGuides Review Group.

If you have recently made significant changes to your guide or created a new page you will need to submit this work to a review process.

An important part of the maintenance process is ensuring that your links work. You can do this in part by regularly checking for broken links using the link checker.

The link checker is available as a dropdown under the Tools option on the top toolbar

Any regular or admin user can access the link checker report.

The link checker is organised by asset owner. Guide assets belonging to previous owners were transferred to the Chief Editors in 2024.

Unfortunately you can't sort by guide title. This does limit the checkers useability.

Although regular users can see every link listed in the report, they can only modify links for the assets they own. Chief Editors should be able to edit all assets.

What if you find a broken link in another guide?

Please let the guide editor know via the 'Contact us about this guide' link (accessible on every guide Welcome page), so that it can be fixed as soon as possible

The Subject and Support Guide FIT can provide statistics for your guide to assist with evaluation.

Statistics:

• are available at guide, page or individual asset level
• can be provided on a daily level for a short period, or at a monthly level for longer periods.

Please request statistics through the feedback box on your guide.