On behalf of the NYU Law Library, welcome! The library and library resources are available to you and your students. You can add links to library materials into your courses - either directly in your syllabus or on Brightspace, or both. Providing links allows your students to get immediate access to course materials without having to search for it on their own, and also accounts for the copyright restrictions surrounding licensed educational materials.
This guide is intended to help professors and their assistants prepare links to insert into course materials.
General Best Practices
- Look for a free and authoritative version of the resource before providing a link to a database.
- When including a link to an eBook, provide a stable link to the book's record in the library catalog, rather than a direct link to the resource / database itself. Catalog links are usually more stable as the platform links may change over time, and will also include the NYU login authentication needed for access. Catalog links may sometimes omit the NYU login authentication, preventing access.
- For example, a link to the Julius Library catalog, such as "julius.law.nyu.edu/record=b2887924" is preferable to a direct link to the eBook platform, such as "https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=415086"). In Discovery, a sample link may look like this: "https://research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=e5427197-b164-35a1-a511-3fadbe8af3b9".
- Tip: To obtain a permanent link on Julius, click "Bookmark link for this record" located at the top right of an item record. In Discovery, login as Guest, and then on the item record, click the Share arrow icon, followed by "Create link."
- Most databases - aside from Westlaw, Lexis, and Bloomberg - require adding an NYU proxy link ("
http://proxy.library.nyu.edu/login?url=") before the stable link to the resource to prompt students to log in with their NetID in order to gain access to the resource.
