Northern Illinois University

Teaching with Blackboard

Electronic Reserves (e-Reserves)

Faculty using Blackboard can request certain materials from the library to be placed on electronic reserve and then can make those resources available to students via a link from within Blackboard.

Placing materials on electronic reserve at the library

Complete details regarding submitting full-text electronic reserve requests is available at: http://www.ulib.niu.edu/ereserveguide.cfm

To submit an electronic reserve request, click here or go to: http://www.ulib.niu.edu/reserveform.cfm.

Adding a link in Blackboard to electronic reserve materials

After placing a request for materials to be placed on electronic reserve, the faculty member will be notified via email once reserve materials have been secured. Reserve staff will inform the Faculty Member of the URL of a Web page containing links to all the materials. Faculty will then share the URL with only the students enrolled in the class. The link will be broken at the end of each semester. A new URL will be assigned if the readings are requested for subsequent semesters. Readings will be stored for up to two years before they are permanently removed from storage.

The process for adding the link within a Blackboard course to the e-reserves is simply a matter of adding an external link to a desired content area within Blackboard.

  1. Open the Web page containing links to all the reserved materials (ie: PDF files).
  2. Copy the URL by highlighting the address and pressing "Control C" to copy the address.
  3. Open another instance of your browser.
  4. Login to Blackboard at http://webcourses.niu.edu and enter the course corresponding to the reserve materials. *Note - If you haven't already requested a Blackboard course section, you'll need to do that prior to proceeding any further. Faculty members can request Blackboard course sections at: https://webcluster.niu.edu/BlackBoard/servlet/blackboard_signon_servlet2
  5. Navigate to the location within the Blackboard course where the link is to be placed.
  6. Click "Edit "View" located in the upper right-hand corner of the page frame.
    Edit View
  7. Click "External Link" to add an external link to the page in Blackboard.
    External Link
  8. Enter the title for the electronic reserve link and then paste the URL of the reserve materials Web page by clicking in the URL field and pressing "Control V".
    External Link Information
  9. Scroll down to the bottom and click "Submit".
    Submit
  10. Click "OK" to confirm.
    OK

More information

For more information concerning electronic reserves at NIU, contact:

Cynthia Snyder
104 Founders Memorial Library
Phone: (815) 753-0163
E-mail: csnyder@niu.edu