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Online Course Design and the Library

Guide for Adler instructors when selecting library resources for online courses

Library Resources by Online Campus Program

Library Guides are librarian-created online collections which bring together the most relevant library resources in for each Online Campus Program.
These guides can be embedded in a course to provide access to information at the students' point-of-need.

Let your librarian know if you would like new resources or information added to a guide.

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Choosing Resources for Your Course

Start with Adler University Library resources:

  • Reliable  scholarly and professional literature
  • No copyright limitations
  • Guaranteed access for our students

This guide will show you how to use our databases and catalog, and you can always have a virtual meeting with the librarian on your course design team for additional assistance.

Course Textbooks

Consider access issues with print textbooks and cost to students:

  • If you want to use a single book throughout the course, ask the librarian if it's available as an e-book. 
    • If it is, the Library will purchase an e-book copy as a back-up reserve copy for students.  
    • If it isn't, the library cannot provide a reserve copy for students.
  • Either way, students will still have to purchase their textbooks--many library e-books are only available to three or fewer students at one time.
  • Please consider our students overseas who may face delays in getting print textbooks delivered in time for the start of classes, as well as financial implications. 
  • The librarian can help you identify e-books owned by Adler's library as well as scholarly open access materials.  Or, consider using scholarly journal articles and chapters from e-books owned by the library as weekly readings.

Linking to Course Materials at Adler Library

Providing all online learners with equitable access to course materials is essential.

To share course readings in Canvas (or if you want students to share more resources with each other in an online discussion board), keep in mind some simple guidelines:

  1. Best practice is to include a copyright notice from the original source and appropriate citations and attributions. 
  2. It's always easiest to link!
    Linking to content from Adler Library, open access repositories, or publicly available content can be one of the easiest and legal methods for access to class materials.
    • Most of the library's subscription content will have DOIs, URLs, or other permalink options, all of which should work for off-campus users. 
    • When selecting required course materials, library materials (e.g. ebooks, journal articles, and videos) and openly-licensed textbooks / educational resources are the easiest resources to link to and legally use. 

Instructions for linking to library materials for a course are described in the boxes below.