Existing Links In BlackBoard | Linking to a Library Home Page
Identifying Specific Subject Resources Relevant to Your Course
Access to Electronic Resources Available by Subscription
Integrating Subscribed Electronic Resources into Blackboard
Providing a Direct Link to an OhioLINK Digital Video
Providing a Direct Link to the Library Catalog
Add a Librarian as a Co-Instructor | Linking to Library Services
SafeAssign and Plagiarism Prevention | Blackboard Scholar
University Libraries subscribes to hundreds of academic online resources for the use of the University of Cincinnati community. This guide will help you find ways to integrate the use of the resources into your Blackboard course shells.
Incorporating links and references to library resources into your courses will benefit you and your students in two ways. First, many students often do not know that the contents of purchased online resources cannot be found via Yahoo, Google, or other search engines. Secondly, encouraging the use of library resources leads your students to better resources, resulting in higher quality papers and assignments.
The following information will help you to integrate Library resources into your Blackboard course shells:.
The Library tab at the top of all Blackboard pages links to a general Library page.
In addition, if you utilize the Library’s Electronic Reserve service, a link to the Electronic Reserves will appear in your course menu. More information on E-Reserves can be found at http://www.libraries.uc.edu/services/reserves/eres_guidelines.html.
One of the easiest ways to integrate library resources is to provide a link to the home page of a specific UC library right in the course menu. This link will remind your students that the library has resources at their disposal and provide easy access to those resources. To link to the library home page:
The link to the Library will now appear at the bottom of your course menu.
The Library provides lists of subject resources at http://www.libraries.uc.edu/. The subject pages are organized in broad subject areas and link to a variety of resources including indexes/databases, reference books, and web sites. By linking to these subject pages, you are providing students with easy access to resources related to the course.
You may create links to these pages in the same way you create a link in #2 above.
Subject Librarians are available to recommend resources for a particular course or assignment. A directory of subject librarians can be found at http://www.libraries.uc.edu/research/subject_resources/librarians.html.
Most electronic resources (databases, electronic reference books, etc..) are limited to use by faculty, students, and staff of the UC community. All on-campus computers are recognized as authorized users. Off-campus users must login via off campus access (http://www.libraries.uc.edu/information/access.htm). in order to use subscribed E-Resources. We recommend emphasizing this access process with students.
Whenever possible, we recommend pointing students to a complete electronic resource (e.g. a database), rather than to a specific article available in the database. This encourages the student to explore the search interface and identify additional resources. It also avoids the problem of shifting URL’s. Often databases are updated and the URL for a specific article does not remain the same, thus the link no longer works and this often is a cause of frustration. Linking to the database provides a more reliable method of directing students to a resource and it also provides the opportunity for the student to explore the resource and discover additional information.
Follow the steps below to create a link to Academic Search Complete.
See tips for making links to articles in selected OhioLINK databases in How to Bookmark an E-Journal Article, a tip section developed by OhioLINK.
Connect to OhioLINK at www.ohiolink.edu, select Digital Media Center, and either link to this page or search for an individual collection. Follow the process for linking to a database.
If you want to link to a record for an individual image or video title, search or browse for it in the appropriate databases, for example, ART Collections around the world or Educational Films & Documentaries . The URL for bookmarking (linking to) an individual image or video record is at the bottom of the record:
If you’d like to provide a link to the library catalog so students are encouraged to search for resources, use http://uclid.uc.edu/search/X . You can also create links to specific search screens by copying their URL at top of the screen, for example, for Journal search the URL is http://uclid.uc.edu/screens/journals.html .
Librarians can serve as co-instructors within Blackboard courses, and can provide valuable virtual help. We can help your students develop good research skills post assignment guides and tips for using resources, as well as provide “virtual” reference hours for students.
Adding a librarian as a co-instructor requires setting up the librarian as a course user and then upgrading the privileges of the user, as follows:
Link to the Help page. It contains link to How do I..., frequently asked questions about libraries. Please emphasize research assistance options (assistance via live chat, e-mail, telephone, and through personal contact with subject selectors). Students often work on their assignments from home or dorm and welcome the opportunity to receive assistance online or over the phone.
Point students to the Library Instruction page for students. This page provides guides, resources, and links to relevant resources and is designed to help your students in using the Library and resources. Among other things, it is linked to What is Plagiarism? - a resource on plagiarism avoidance.
Point students to RefWorks at http://www.refworks.com/ or other citation management tools.
Use the group function in Blackboard to enable students to email research findings to each other.
SafeAssign™ is a plagiarism prevention service, offered by Blackboard. Instructors can set up SafeAssignments in their Blackboard courses and let students submit papers to these assignments. As students submit papers, they are checked against SafeAssign's comprehensive databases of source material. The papers will then be delivered to instructors through the Blackboard Learning System together with the originality reports, with the results of the matching process, attached to them. (This information is taken from the SafeAssign Wiki, where you can learn more about SafeAssign, see sample reports, etc).
You can also learn more about SafeAssign from Using SafeAssign in Blackboard developed by UCit Blackboard support team. This document along with other useful Blackboard Guides and Tutorials is available at the Blackboard Help page. Click "Instructors" - "Guides and Tutorials."
Librarians will be happy to work with you towards plagiarism prevention. Please visit Plagiarism: prevention and detection strategies for ideas.
Blackboard Scholar is built right into the Blackboard Learning System, for easy integration of relevant, reliable resources and dynamic streams from Scholar, directly into the course.See the press release on Scholar from the Blackboard Media Center for more information. Learn ho you
can integrate Scholar resources directly into the course environment.
Related resource: 7 Things You Should Know About Social Bookmarking (PDF file).
The University of Cincinnati Library acknowledges the University of Texas, Austin Library and the University of Montana, Missoula for their assistance in preparation of this guide:
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/services/instruction/faculty/blackboard/index.html
http://www.lib.umt.edu/research/guide/pdf/fac_bbguide.pdf
UC guide developed August 2006, last updated September 2007
