Reading lists - WebLearn

Reading Lists Purpose: The R ea di n g Li s ts feature allows a user (tutor, lecturer, librarian, administrator, student) to create a reading list in WebLearn by browsing various library holdings, including the University’s library catalogue and electronic journals. At the click of a button, relevant citations are imported into the reading list which is stored, maintained and displayed in WebLearn. When viewed by a student, the reading list contains up-to-date availability information and links to full text versions of journal articles (where available). Default permissions: In a standard WebLearn site, only those participants with the m ai nt ai n or c o ntr i b u te role are able to create a new reading list, and edit or remove existing reading lists. Anyone can create and manage a reading list in Res o urc es in their own My W o rk s pac e . Typical use & good practice tips: Improvements to the Re a di n g Li s ts feature were formally requested by the Oxford University Student’s Union (OUSU) to make the process of finding prescribed course books and articles a lot quicker for students. As well as searching the library catalogue holdings, a user can elect to type citation details directly in to the reading list, or import a reading list from citation management software such as EndNote or RefWorks. The reading list feature is not a separate tool in WebLearn. Reading lists are created and stored in the R es o ur c es area in a WebLearn site or My W ork s p ac e . For a course site, the tutor or lecturer needs to provide a link to the reading list, so that students can easily find it. This can be done either by providing a link from your WebLearn H o m e P ag e , or by using M a k e W eb C o nt e nt Li nk alongside the reading list, which will create a link to it from the left hand tools menu (see details later in this guide). Other useful step-by-step guides to read in conjunction with this one: R es o ur c es

All step-by-step guides are available from WebLearn.ox.ac.uk/info Oxford University SOLO guide: http://libguides.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/SOLO

Creating a Reading List The R e adi n g Li s ts feature is built into the Res o urc es area in a WebLearn site. Navigate to a suitable folder in R es o ur c es and then select A d d > Add Reading List:

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There are three methods to find or generate citations which will then automatically be built into your WebLearn reading list: 1. Search the Oxford University library catalogue (SOLO) 2. Create a new citation/s by typing in the data if you know the bibliographic details 3. Import a reading list that may already exist in citation management tools such as EndNote or RefWorks. The required style is R e fMa n ( RI S) , which is one of the standard built-in styles available in such applications.

Select the button (from the screen above) for your desired method. The first method presents a search screen for you to insert relevant search key words. The results screen offers the option to import the relevant citations into the WebLearn reading list that you are creating. The following sections describe how to use each of the three methods.

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Search the Library Catalogue Example 1: Book from the Library Catalogue (SOLO): One the library search page you can search for an item by typing a search term in the “Oxford Collections” text box. The "Oxford collections" tab should be selected for books and the names of journals (amongst other things). The second tab (“Journal Articles (beta)”) should be used if you need to search for a particular journal article (see Example 2). Remember to click the Se a rc h button.

Matching items will be returned, each containing an I m p or t i nt o W e bL e ar n link. Click on this to import the item into your reading list.

For some searches, multiple versions may be found. This would be noted on the screen: Multiple versions found, with the option to view all versions:

After clicking the link , you will see a confirmation screen which allows you either to go back and select another relevant citation, or simply close the confirmation window. Closing the window automatically saves this item in your reading list.

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Example 2: Journal article from the Library Catalogue (SOLO): Within SOLO, select the A r ti cl es & M or e tab if you wish to search for a particular journal article.

To add a particular article to your reading list, click the I m po rt i nt o W e b Le a rn link:

Again there will be a confirmation screen:

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Back in your WebLearn browser window, you will see that the Ci ta t i o n Co u n t now shows two entries, as a result of the two examples just presented:

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You need to click the E dit Re a di n g Li s t button to view the reading list (and subsequently move on with the saving and naming process – see later in this guide).

Add a citation manually If you have the bibliographic details of a particular citation (e.g. from an earlier reading list or from a paper-based publication), you can add it manually to your reading list in WebLearn. Add a new reading list in R es o ur c es (or edit an existing one). Click on the button

:

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The following screen appears. Type in all known data – the author and title fields are mandatory.

Click

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and the citation will be formatted and saved in your reading list:

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Save and name your reading list as described later in this guide.

Import citations from an EndNote library You may already have built a library of citations using citation management software such as EndNote or RefWorks. Selected citations can be exported from EndNote and imported into your WebLearn reading list. WebLearn requires the citations to be in R ef M a n (R I S) style, which is one of the standard output styles available in EndNote. Open your EndNote library file, which has an .enl extension Select the required style: R e f Ma n (R I S) Highlight the citation/s or select the group of citations that you wish to export

Select Fi l e > Ex p or t . In the export window, complete and check the following fields: 1. Specify a location in which to save it 2. Give the output file an appropriate file name 3. Select the text file format: .txt 4. Confirm that the output style is R ef M a n ( R I S ) 5. Select E x p or t s el ec te d r ef er e nc es 6. Click S a v e

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Your selected references will be exported as a text file in the required format, with appropriate tags identifying each data field, e.g. “TY – JOUR” means the type is a journal article:

First journal article

Second journal article

Back in WebLearn, add a new reading list in R es ou rc es (or edit an existing one). Click on the button IT Services

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On the next screen, you can either browse to find the text file, or copy the text data and paste it into the box provided. If you are importing only one or two citations, the copy and paste method might be quicker. In this example, we will import the text file that we exported from EndNote:

The two citations have been imported from the text file:

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Save and name your reading list as described in the next section.

Save and name your reading list Below is an example of the reading list compiled from the citations we selected in examples 1, 2 and 3 presented earlier in this guide.

You can carry on building the reading list, or click to save the current reading list. You can always add more citations later, if necessary; if you are a tutor or lecturer, remember to tell your students if you update the reading list, since they may have printed out the original version. Click

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to move to the S a v e page:

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Give the file a sensible name. This S av e page is the same as the E di t D e tai l s ( Pr o per ti es ) page, which also allows you to configure access to this resource:

As with any other item in R es o ur c es , reading lists can be made available on a particular date, for a limited period of time (this is called ‘timed release’). The dates can be specified on the same E di t D e t ail s ( Pr o per ti es ) page:

Click The reading list has a URL and which can be circulated to students. Alternatively you can select Make Web Content Link alongside the reading list resource, which will automatically create a link to it from the left hand tools menu:

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Users will see the link to the reading list on the tools menu in the WebLearn site and they can go directly to it:

Student view of the reading list When students open the reading list, it will appear as shown above. This the Title View, showing the title and author/s of each citation. Clicking on Citation View provides more specific details of each citation:

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On either the Citation View or the Title View: The student can link directly to the items in various library holdings by using either the Fi n d I t! or S O LO library search functions (for books). A list of Oxford University libraries which contain copies of the item is shown in the greyheaded box. For journals, holdings in online databases are listed, where available.

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The Fi n d It ! link will show current availability of the item in various library holdings:

The user can click on GO next to the service of their choice, to find out more about the location and availability of the item. Links to online items are dynamic, so if the full text URL ever changes, the reading list will NOT need updating:

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Further help available from the Bodleian Libraries The website of the Bodleian Libraries is: http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/ Library guides are available at: http://libguides.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/

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Known issues with the Reading Lists feature Import from RIS (EndNote) Problem 1: First citation from imported text file is always missing Comments: In the text file, records are separated by an -ER tag ('End of Record'?). Of course this is not present at the very beginning of the text file. As a result, the very first citation is always missing in the resulting reading list. This only happens when importing from an uploaded file. Importing the same text by pasting it into the upload box results in the first citation being imported correctly. Problem 2: When importing from a text file, all author fields are lost Comments: On importing the text file, which contains author details, author information is lost from all citations. In the WebLearn reading list there is the option to S or t by Fi rs t A ut h or , which of course is then ineffective. This happens since the importer generally looks for A 1 for the author field and not A U . A temporary work around is to edit your exported EndNote text file and change all occurrences of A U to A 1 . Most text editors such as Notepad offer a Fi n d & R e pl ac e Al l function. Problem 3: If the citation (reference) type is ‘unknown’, then the data from most other fields is lost Comments: There are many different Citation TYPES in EndNote, e.g. JOUR=Journal, PAT=Patent etc. WebLearn only recognises about 6 types, but if the type is not recognised, then it loses a whole lot of other existing fields.

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