As established in 2007, this project seeks to locate and annotate publicly searchable databases produced by agencies of the 50 state governments of the United States plus the District of Columbia.
This guide is intended as a how-to guide for project for current and prospective volunteers.
Interest has been expressed in creating database listings for local governments of the 50 states, commonwealths and other outlying territories of the United States. We're open to this. It would be up to an individual to step forward and create such pages. In the case of creating pages for local governments of one of the fifty states, the documents specialist for that page would need to be consulted.
By adopting a project guide, you are agreeing to do the following:
Every January, the project coordinator will review the LibGuides login history. If a volunteer has not logged in during the previous calendar year, any guide they have will be placed into "orphan" status without notice to volunteer. Then the guide(s) will be offered out for adoption.
This section discusses the structure of State LibGuides. There are a set of required elements and a set of optional elements.
Required elements on a state guide's "home" page.
Every State LibGuide's first page is called the "home" page. With most states, there may only be a "home" page. A state's home page came with these required elements that should not be removed:
TOP
Introduction Box - Used to introduce what the guide is about and to highlight the last time you checked the guide for broken links.
COLUMN ONE
Table of Contents - If you are a new volunteer taking over a state guide, your Table of Contents (TOC) will be auto generated from the other boxes in your guide. In the logged in view, this TOC will show all subject boxes. In the public view, it will only show the boxes that have not been hidden. If you are an existing volunteer who wishes to make their TOC self updating, see the top box in the upper right hand column.
Profile Box - This contains your name, a picture (needn't be personal) and at least one way to contact you. We present ourselves this way in part to make it clear who to contact with suggestions for edits, adds and deletions; and in part to highlight the expertise of government information specialists. You may title the profile box any way you'd like.
COLUMN TWO
List of Subject Boxes. The column two list of subject boxes is arranged as follows (items in italics are optional):
The main list of subjects correspond to boxes in your guide. Do not remove any of these boxes. If you don't have databases that fit in a particular box, leave the box empty of any content. Then click on the pencil in the upper right and corner and in the box that appears click on "draft mode." This will keep your empty box from displaying in the public view of your guide.
The indented subjects are subheadings within the main subject box and may be used or not at your discretion. Databases do NOT have to match a subheading. If you do use subheadings, add them as HTML items, and add your databases as link items.
If you have empty boxes in your guide, your final box will be "Empty Subjects - Can you help?" which will list any topic areas your state does not current have. You may copy the box in Alaska as a guide, customizing the state and the exact list of missing topics.
Optional elements in State LibGuides
If a project volunteer wishes, they may add the following optional elements to their State LibGuide:
The use of these elements is completely up to you. If you create these optional features and then leave the project, the next state volunteer will not be obligated to keep them up.
There are two types of subject guides associated with State Agency Databases Project:
You may find the following resources useful in your work for our project:
Current volunteers are encouraged to change their guides to a side-nav layout in order to have a self-updating table of contents. Thanks for Laura Kromer (MO) for this "How-To":
In order to auto-generate a Table of Contents, you simply need to change the Layout of your Guide to a “Side Nav” as opposed to a “Tabbed Nav.”
Springshare has an illustrated tutorial (login required) on changing your layout to side-nav.
When you change to “System Default – Side-Nav Layout”, make sure that BOTH BOXES are checked. Without the second box checked, it will not auto-generate the Table of Contents. The links under the Table of Contents will be to the content boxes that you add in the right column. So in order to change anything within the Table of Contents, you would have to change it within the title of the content box in the right column.
You can also add your Documents Specialist box with your content information below the Table of Contents by clicking “Add Box.”
