Library Support for Faculty

It's generally considered best practice for faculty to provide hyperlinks to electronic course materials (articles, e-books, etc.) for students for 3 reasons:

1. Fair Use: Copyright issues with course materials usually arise because you're making copies. Make life easy on yourself and your students by not making copies. Link to readings available through the University Libraries in Blackboard by using the instructions provided below. See our Copyright Guide for more information about fair use.

2. Accessibility: Many databases and publishers provide electronic materials in multiple text and audio formats (HTML, PDF, mp3, etc.). This allows students to select the best format for their needs.

3. Usage statistics: When students access electronic course materials in library databases, this is reflected in the usage statistics. Accurate usage statistics help the library understand how frequently our resources are used by patrons.

Portions of this text have been adapted from the University of Minnesota Libraries' guide to Sharing Course Materials, which is licensed under a CC-BY-NC License.

Article Linking in Blackboard
Students using a Library subscribed e-journal article in Blackboard from off-campus will either not be able to access the item or will be asked to reenter their myWSUid and password.  Adding links to WSU subscribed e-journal articles in Blackboard so that students can access them from off-campus requires the BlackBoard EZ Proxy URL be prepended to the article's URL.  This special URL will allow the student to be recognized as an authroized user and prevent the student from having to log in twice to access the article. 
 
The Libraries has a tool to help with adding the Blackboard EZ Proxy URL.  It can also be found here.

1. When you find an article in a database, look for a link that says "Stable URL," "Persistent URL," or "Durable URL".  (examples)
2. Paste the full link (Including the http://) from the database in the first text box.
3. Click the "create link" button and a link will be generated in the second box.
4. Copy and paste the link in the second box into your Blackboard course.

Link from database:


Paste this link into Blackboard:

Locating the Article URL
The article URL you will be looking for is a permanent URL.  This can be labeled as a stable URL, a durable URL, a persistent URL, etc.  If you are linking to a database, please contact me or a Research Services Librarian for the URL.