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Integrating Library Content into Canvas: Recommended Library Content

A guide for faculty to help identify and integrate library resources and support tools into your Canvas courses.

General Tips

The most important advice to pass along to students is to ask for help! Students are often unwilling to come to a service desk or contact us for help.  But if they do that early in their research, we can get them started in the right direction!  Please at least include a link to our home page (http://libraries.uky.edu/) and a suggestion that students contact us early for help.  Options for getting help can be found on this page: https://libraries.uky.edu/Ask.

In addition, please keep these tips in mind when integrating library resources into your courses:

  • Let us help you include a permanent, working links to articles. Links to articles or search results from catalog or database searches frequently have a session ID included, which means the link is temporary.  Contact us for help if you want to provide these kinds of links.
  • Links in our website have been configured to work off campus by including code for our proxy server.  If you need help providing a link that will work off campus, let us know.
  • Please link to articles rather than uploading a PDF you have downloaded.  In addition to being a copyright violation, bypassing library resources creates inaccurate usage statistics and can lead to a subscription cancellation. We rely on usage statistics to determine which resources are being used and which ones may be candidates for cancellation.
  • Using the Canvas app is a good way to integrate content that will be maintained by us and include appropriately formatted links.

Help Resources

Our main help page is https://libraries.uky.edu/Ask.  From there, students can find phone, email, and chat details so they can get help in whatever way suits them.  If you want to refer students to a specific library, you can find a list with links here: https://libraries.uky.edu/locations.  

Students can contact us when they are stuck, but did you know that they can also make an appointment for a more in-depth consultation?  Librarians are available to meet with students individually or in groups to discuss their specific research assignments.

Check out some of these other resources that may be useful to your students:

Information Literacy Training

Librarians are available to come to your class to conduct information literacy sessions tied to your course research assignment.  Visit this page for more information and to access a request form. 

Recommended Databases or other resources

We subscribe to a huge number of databases, and undergraduates can be overwhelmed when they first start their library research.  Providing links to recommended databases can help.  If you do this yourself, be sure to copy the customized library link so it will work off campus.  (See https://libguides.uky.edu/az.php to search or browse through all available databases.  If you copy the links from the resulting search screen, they will work.  Look for customized links in this format: https://libguides.uky.edu/671 or links that include our proxy string "ezproxy.uky.edu", e.g., http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.uky.edu/action/showBasicSearch.  

An easier way to provide access to recommended resources is by linking to a subject or course guide.  Check out the existing guides here: https://libguides.uky.edu/.  Or Ask Us if you would like us to create a guide with resources, tutorials and help information for your specific course.