Library Content in Blackboard

Claire Dygert of American University Library gave an excellent presentation at NASIG about her library’s use of Blackboard to provide course-related content to professors and students.

American University and Washington Research Libraries Consortium, to which AU belongs, developed a plug-in for Bb called LinkMaker. LinkMaker assists faculty and librarians with the creation of persistent, proxied links to content for e-reserves or other use. It works with most of their subscribed online resources and–drumroll please!–they have made it available as an open-source tool.

The second thing they’ve done is to create a library “course” in Bb that provides information about what library content could be integrated into Bb. Then they model it in a sample course environment. In order to attract more interest, they don’t actually use the word “course,” but rather call it a library “site.” No one wants to join something if they think it means homework and tests!

In addition to the LinkMaker, the library course includes information and sample language about information literacy, contacting librarians, tutorials, and streaming media that professors or other course builders can include in their own courses.

I don’t see the presentations on the conference website yet, but they should be posted within about one week.

One reply on “Library Content in Blackboard”

  1. When our Blackboard guru tried to access this download, the link was broken. I contacted the programer, & she said the program is for Blackboard version 6.
    However she plans to write the revision this summer for Blackboard vers.7 and have available for Fall. It should be a good step toward “seamless integration of resources” for which libraries are striving.
    Thanks for letting us know it’s out there.

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