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NU SpringShare Playbook

Best practices and guidance for creating and maintaining LibApps and guides at NU. Created by cross-functional resource centers.

Link Checker

Link Checker (Monthly)

The link checker provides a report of broken links in Database assets, Link assets and Books from the Catalog assets. Link checker runs on pages that have received at least one visitor/view on the public side. Library catalog links or proxied links may return false positives for being broken; these links may be added to the exclusions list.

Review the link checker reports every month.

For more information about Link Checker, refer to the following: https://ask.springshare.com/libguides/faq/771

How to use the Link Checker: 

  • View only your broken links - select yourself in the Owner column
  • Click to test the "broken" links 
  • Open the edit icon to see the asset and fix immediately on all mapped links.

Links in Database, Link, and Book Assets on recently-visited LibGuides pages are checked continually. If you dismiss a link from this report, it is not re-checked for 7 days, even if pages containing the link are visited. Links with the Proxy option enabled are not checked, as there's no way for our checker to log in / verify a page is displayed.

The Link Checker should be checked monthly. Go to LibGuides > Tools > Link Checker.

Ebook Central links in LibGuides should be manually checked every quarter by guider owners. Ebook Central regularly removes titles from its catalog which will take patrons to an Ebook Central page indicating that there is no document.

If you delete a link from your guide, it will still be in the Assets list.

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Content Review

Guide Content Review 

Each guide should undergo a formal content review every 6 months. Resource Center guides or LibGuides that are more active should set a more frequent review schedule. 

  • Rebalance guide assignments amongst team
  • Review content to make sure everything up-to-date.
  • Check assets. (Under Content in the top Orange Header Bar)
    • Delete duplicates.
      • Consolidate assets by mapping the links/documents/etc. on guides to the same asset.
    • Delete unused assets. (TIP: When you sort assets by “mapping count” you can quickly limit to those that are in 0 guides, meaning they can safely be deleted.)
    • Ensure names, descriptions, and links are correct.
  • Use Check my Links or other similar non-LibGuides link checker to ensure embedded links are not broken.

 

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