Librarians are sometimes asked by course instructors how they can make particular
e-resources, especially online journal articles, more easily available to their students - but linking to online resources can sometimes be tricky.
What's the Problem?
The URL that appears in a web browser's address box when an online article is viewed is usually intended to be temporary and often does not function a few days or weeks later. So, for an online reading list for a course, it will be necessary for you to give access in a different way. There are several possibilities:
You can create a list of articles as a set of references in a RefWorks folder. The references can be sent to RefWorks from the individual databases where the articles are indexed. Then, direct access to the individual articles from RefWorks will be given by the "Find it @ York" button that will appear beside each reference in the RefWorks folder.
One more step will be necessary in order to give access to these references for your students: you will want to use the "Share Folder" command in the "Folders" menu in RefWorks (a new facility in RefWorks known as RefShare). RefShare will create for you a stable URL which you can either link to from your course webpage or e-mail to students. For more information on RefWorks and RefShare, see the article in this newsletter.
You can allow your students to access to a list of online articles is from the Libraries’ course reserves listing. You can request that a given online article be put "on reserve" for your course, and our Circulation staff create a record in the reserves module of the library catalogue to link to the article. On your course webpage, you would then remind your students to find their readings, hardcopy and online, through the course reserves listing of the Libraries.
Directly create links to online journal articles from your course website. This will be somewhat more complicated than the methods already noted above, and is not available for all articles. There is the added necessity of authentication of readers as York-affiliated, which requires amending the stable URL so that it can work with our authentication service.
Rather than provide detailed instructions here, we are preparing a webpage to guide course instructors in the location and amending of stable article URLS which will soon be available on the Libraries website.
