Law librarians have designed staff training handouts, quick guides for lay patrons, and complex pathfinders for upper class students and faculty. Guides supplement staff, by giving guidance and aid to people the writer may never meet. Guides also market your library and the larger institution.
Library guides continue their traditional forms, of course.
But with the development of the World Wide Web, wonderful new possibilities have come for library guides. This article is written to introduce the reader to basic tenets of design, and to help the reader begin to think about new possibilities for electronic guides. This means you must define the primary audience, and plan your guide with their interests and needs in mind. You may need to create more guides, since you should not try to serve faculty or attorneys with the same guide you created for undergraduate users. List questions to help you organize the information.