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    Customer contribution on the CKC

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    • Product: Cross Product

    Question

    How can an Ex Libris community member, contribute knowledge to the Customer Knowledge Center?

    Answer

    Watch the recorded video.

    Currently, length limitation for newly published articles is 131,000 characters.

    If your text is longer than this limitation:

    1. Publish an initial version of the article, within the 131,000 characters limitation.
    2. Once it is published, edit it to add text as you wish.


    Community Contribution - Best Practices and Tips

    General guidelines
    Avoid duplication

    Before writing an article, search for existing article that might cover the topic you want to write about. See Tips for Advanced Document Searching in the Customer Knowledge Center.

    Audience Level

    Different tasks and issues are relevant to different librarian roles, and requires different level of skills, to deal with.
    Always assume the reader has appropriate level of technical knowledge, to understand your article.

    Simplicity

    Keep your article short and simple. Try using  only words that are necessary,  and avoid unnecessary visual clutter, redundant labels, and other information that does not serve a purpose. Use language that leaves no ambiguity.

    Example:

    Good

    Bad

    Click Submit to open the locations window

    Clicking on the Submit button should cause the locations window to display
    Best Practices
    Use Present Tense.  

    A solution is a procedure and should be written in language that leaves no ambiguity. No need in words like “please” and “should” in the solution. Use present-tense and employ simple, command verbs for procedures or processes.

    Information confidentiality

    Your contribution will be published to the world and indexed by search engines. Do not to include any sensitive information about your institution or 3rd parties, like patron's personal details.

    Standardized terminology/vocabulary.

    Use product names, regularly used terms (e.g. email vs. e-mail.), module names, process, file names…  Checkout the Glossary of Alma, Primo and Summon.

    Example:

    Good

    Bad
    • Text skewed in Internet Explorer 9
    • Text okay in Internet Explorer 8
    • When viewed in IE9, the text is skewed
    • Looking at it in Internet Explorer v.8 shows the text lined up
    Numbered steps

    Use numbered or bulleted lists wherever they make sense. Like in step-by-step instructions.

    Example:

    Good

    Bad
    1. Go to Tools menu
    2. Click Options
    3. Click the Edit tab
    1. On the Tools menu, click Options, and then click the Edit tab.
    Optimize your text for search engines:
    • Title - should reflect the content, and include keywords (Module or process name, quotation from error message. Make sure though not to include the "/" sign in the title).
    • Include the keywords in the text too.
    • Error messages - should be quoted exactly as they appear.

    Example:

    Good

    Bad

    Error: WWW-F : MYSHELF-SHORT read_file: can't open /tmp/usm/u20_4/utf_files/exlibris/aleph/usm/u20_4

    /alephe/www_f_eng/myshelf-short-head-2-no-course

    Error message related to reading a file and not being able to open a particular path
    Link to other relevant pages

    Add value to your text by linking to other pages on the CKC or outside, as a reference for further reading.

     

    Before publishing the article - search again! It could be that a colleague, or Ex Libris, published a new article on the topic in the meantime. 

    Additional Information

    To request a Customer Portal user which will allow you to contribute your Knowledge and publish your own Community Knowledge articles, see: Become a Knowledge Center Contributor

     

    • Article last edited: 10-Aug-2018