You can enhance your courses by adding content from the library. The library is used to post eReserves, electronic manuscripts, and other institution resources. It allows seamless integration with Blackboard Learn, making it a powerful way to share and distribute library materials.

There are two main areas within the Library:

  • Library content
  • eReserves

Your institution can add additional areas to the library to meet more needs.

Library content

The library is intended for content that may be shared across the entire institution, but it can be organized according to your institution's specific needs.

All users have read access to all content within the library by default. Instructors may add items from library content to courses within Blackboard Learn.

eReserves

eReserves is a folder within the library that contains access-controlled materials, such as documents with copyrights. eReserves are not available for organizations, and may only be available for courses.

eReserves are automatically organized by course. Each course in Blackboard Learn has a corresponding course folder in eReserves.

Your institution controls whether this folder is available.

All users have automatic read access to eReserves for courses they are enrolled in. eReserves folders for other courses do not appear in the file tree. Instructors may add items from eReserves to their corresponding courses.

Create and manage eReserves folders

The first time the instructor, teaching assistant, or course builder accesses the Content Collection in a new course, the system automatically creates a corresponding course folder within eReserves. If a course is added to Blackboard Learn, the eReserves course folder will appear to course users the first time the instructor accesses the Content Collection.

Course availability and eReserves

When a course is unavailable, a user's role determine whether or not they can see the eReserves folder. Instructors, course builders, and teaching assistants can see the folder whether the course is available or unavailable. Students can only see the eReserves course folder when the course is available.

Delete a course and eReserves

If a course is deleted from Blackboard Learn, the eReserves folder and all of its content remains. An administrator can use the Content Orphaned by Location report to discover and delete the content.

More on managing orphaned content for administrators

Add Library content to a course

You can add items from the library to your course content areas. This includes items that appear in your course folders within eReserves, as well as items from library content.

  1. Change Edit Mode to ON.
  2. Open a content area.
  3. Point to Build Content to access the list and select Item.
  4. Type a name for the link.
  5. Type a description in the text box.
  6. Select Browse next to Link to Content Management Item.
  7. Use the course map to select the item from the library.
  8. Select Yes if you want to Permit users to view the content item.
  9. Select Yes if you want to Track the number of views.
  10. Choose the date and time restrictions by using the Display After and Display Until date and time fields. Select both the Display After and Display Until check boxes to enable the selected dates and times.
  11. Select Submit.

You can also add Content Collection items in a course with the Insert/Edit Link function in the editor.

All items within library content are available to use within a course. Because eReserves access is controlled at the institution level, you can only add items from the eReserves course folder that corresponds to your course. You can't add content from eReserves course folders for other courses you may be teaching.