L&LR staff blog

I’m writing this here because Julian asked for a reminder on how to do it (I had to remind myself first!) and thought a permanent record in the blog would be more useful than an ephemeral email.

Also: I’ve an idea that it may be useful to combine this with my process for creating new book feeds from RefWorks ==> Blackboard-site booklists as a replacement for the defunct Amazon building block.

So, here’s how to create a RefWorks account attached to a Blackboard site: this uses a Bb building block called ‘RefWorks Bridge‘.

Step 1: creating a RefWorks account within Bb

1. Log into Bb and navigate to the site.
2. From the ‘Tools’ menu, click on ‘Site Tools’.
   
3. Scroll down and click on the link to ‘RefWorks – bibliographic management software’.
   
4. A new window will appear. After a few moments you should see a ‘RefWorks Login’ screen.
   
5. Under the heading ‘Please select a RefWorks account to link to’, select ‘Create a new account’. Don’t try to use your existing personal RefWorks account! It will break your normal Portal/Athens login to RefWorks.
6. You should now see the standard RefWorks ‘congratulations’ message, telling you that you’ve created a RefWorks account attached to the Blackboard site. You can begin to use this RefWorks account as normal. The next time you go through ‘Site Tools’ to RefWorks, it should log you straight in to this account.

Step 2: locating the username & password for your RefWorks account

1. Within your new RefWorks account, go to the ‘Tools’ menu and select ‘Update User Information’.
   
2. Make a note of your login name (it will begin with the letters BB-).
3. Create a new ‘Read-only Password’ for this account and make a note of it.
4. Select your ‘Type of User’ and ‘Area of Focus’, then hit ‘Update’.
   

Step 3: displaying the RefWorks account to students

1. Go to a content area in your Blackboard site (e.g. ‘Learning Materials’).
   
2. In the top right, click on ‘Edit View’, the use the ‘Select’ drop-down menu to choose the option ‘Link to RefWorks database’ – hit ‘Go’.
   
3. After a few moments, you should see the ‘Link Refworks Database’ screen. Complete this form using the login name and read-only password from the previous step. You will also need to complete the ‘Course Document Title’ and ‘Text for Database Link’ fields – these determine what text will be displayed to students in Blackboard. Next, hit ‘Submit’.
   
4. Blackboard will display ‘Link to RefWorks database successfully added’. Hit ‘OK’ and switch back into ‘Display View’.
5. You will now see what your students will see – a Bb content item which links through to a RefWorks database.