Integration Innovation: Launching the Library into a Course Management System

In higher education, courses are commonly delivered through or supported by an online course management system (CMS). Unfortunately, there is typically little integration between the CMS and online library resources, making discovery and use of library tools for coursework a difficult task for both instructors and students. This paper reports how one group at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities examined the educational technology used in courses and then identified a method to efficiently integrate library resources with existing course technologies. The group developed a plan for a library course page system that automatically generates a page populated with relevant library resources for each class. The page is included by default in the CMS and is able to be integrated into other technologies. The creation and early stages of implementation of the library course page system are discussed, as well as future directions.

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