Linking Electronic Journal Articles From the Library to Your Blackboard Course Page

1) Searching for appropriate class materials from the library's web page: www.harpercollege.edu/library

• Go to the "Articles, Indexes and Databases" link.
• Then choose "Ebscohost", the first group of databases.
• Select the database most appropriate for your subject area -
  you may search more than one.
• Choose a Basic Search or an Advanced Search. Experiment with different terms and key concepts.
• Select the "Full-Text" search option before executing your search. You will want the full-text to be available for linking from your Blackboard page.
• Carefully read through your results. The full text may be available in either HTML or PDF format, or both. Keep in mind that PDF files are large images, scanned documents, and will take longer to load and print.
• Once you have found the article(s) you want to include in your Blackboard site, you will need to click on the Title (not the full-text) of each article to copy and paste the needed information into Blackboard.

2) Linking To the Article From Blackboard

The easiest way to perform these tasks is to have two browser (Internet Explorer, Netscape, etc.) windows open at the same time.

• Keep your Ebscohost search results up in one browser window, then do Control+N to open up another window.
• Within the new browser window, open your Blackboard site and log in.
• Click on the "Courses" tab.
  Click on the title of the course to which you want to add the article. Then click on the "Control Panel" button.
• Choose the area to which you want to add the article - for example, "Web Sites".
• Create a new folder for the article, or open up an existing folder to which you want to add the article.
• Click on "Add Item." This will open up the screen into which you will copy and paste information from your Ebscohost search.

• Copy the title of the article into the "Name" box.
  Into the URL box, you will need to enter two things.
  
  1). First type in (after the http://): prox2.harper.cc.il.us:2048/login?url=

  2). Then, from the Ebscohost citation, copy in the rest of the URL (beginning with http://) from the place in the citation which says
  "Persistent Link to this Article."

Both of these must be entered into the URL box for the article to be accessible off-campus.

Into the Description box, you may type your own notes, or copy in the abstract from the Ebscohost article.

Choose additional options as necessary from the Blackboard menu, then click Submit. Your article should be added to the appropriate folder and menu.

Last Updated 05/16/07