Adding Items to Courses

Adding Items to Courses

Once you have created the course, you can attach items to it.  There are three general types of items that may be attached to a course:

• Physical items that are in the catalog
• Electronic resources that are in the catalog
• Items that are not in the catalog (e.g. personal copies, electronic resources)

Physical Items

To attach physical items from the catalog to a course:

• Select the “Course materials” tab from the course page

• Choose the “Associate Item” tab from the Course Materials tab

• Scan in the item barcode

• Enter a “Relationship” term (e.g. required, recommended); this field is optional and simply free text.  This entry displays in the catalog, but is informational in nature and does not have any other function.
• In most, if not all cases, you will want to assign a temporary circulation modifier and shelving location. You may also edit the call number and item status, as appropriate.

• Click “Add Material” to save

Electronic Resources (in catalog)

To attach electronic resources (e.g. ebooks, streaming videos) that are in the catalog:

• Select the “Associate electronic resource from catalog” tab from the Course Materials tab
• Enter the database ID/bibliographic record ID for the title you wish to attach
• Enter a “Relationship” term (e.g. required, recommended); this field is optional and simply free text.  This entry displays in the catalog, but is informational in nature and does not have any other function.
• Click “Add Material” to save

Electronic Resources (not in catalog)

To attach electronic resources that are NOT in the catalog:

• Select the “Associate brief record” tab
• Enter a “Relationship” term (e.g. required, recommended); this field is optional and simply free text.  This entry displays in the catalog, but is informational in nature and does not have any other function.

• Retain the default values for “Form” and “Type”
• Enter the title of the item
• Enter the URI for the item
• Enter the link text you want to display in the catalog
• Click “Add material” to save

Physical Items (not in catalog)

If there are other physical items, such as faculty personal copies, to be placed on reserve, it is recommended that brief records be created for these items. Then, they can be associated with the appropriate course(s) using the method described above for other physical items. To create a brief record:

• From the “Cataloging” menu, select “Create New MARC Record”

• Choose the appropriate “xreserve” template, usually “xreserve_book”
• Click “Load”

• Complete the template including the author, title, edition, etc.  Note: click the MARC Help checkbox for help interpreting the MARC tags

• Click “Save”

• Attach your item to the new brief bib record
• Return to your course in  Course Reserves
• Select the  “Course Materials” tab
• Select the “Associate Item” tab
• Scan in the barcode for the item you just created

Notes:

If you created the item as a reserve item., using an appropriate circulation modifier and shelving location, you should not have to update the item attributes in the course reserves module

You must have the required permission to create a brief bibliographic record.

Editing Items

To edit an item:

• Select the item from the item grid
• Click on the Actions Menu
• Click on “Edit Selected”

Note: Currently, the only edits you can make are to change the course to which the item is attached or its “relationship” to the course.

Removing Items from Courses

Items may be removed from a course individually or by archiving the course itself.

To remove an individual item or items from a course:

• Select the item from the item grid
• Click on the Actions Menu
• Click on “Remove Selected”

Note: removing an item from a course should revert its attributes to their original values.  However, there is a bug related to this functionality and it does NOT currently revert values for circ modifier, shelving location or item status correctly.

Items may also be removed from a course by archiving the course itself. See Archiving Courses.

Adding Users to a Course

To add users (e.g. instructors) to a course:

• Select the “Course users” tab from the course page

• If you have the user’s barcode, scan / enter it in the search box
• If you do not have the user’s barcode, click “Search for Patron”; this option takes you to the normal patron search interface
• Enter the user’s name (or other identifying information) and click “Search”

• Check the box for the correct user
• Click “Select”

• To assign a role for the patron, start typing in the “Role” box; note: there are three pre-defined roles: instructor, teaching assistant, student; these display when you start typing; Only the “Instructor” and “Teaching Assistant” roles display in the public catalog; student names NEVER appear in the public catalog.
• Select the appropriate role

• Click “Add User” to save

Archiving Courses

At the end of a term, you may archive the courses for that term.  Archiving a course removes all items attached to the course.  If items were edited when attached to the course, their attributes will revert to the original values.

To archive courses:

• From the course list, select the course(s) to be archived
• Click on the Actions Menu
• Click “Archive Selected”

You may also archive an individual course directly on the course page by selecting the “Archive Course” button.

Notes: 

By default, archived courses do not display in the catalog.

As of Evergreen version 3.8, archiving a course does not retain the link between the items and the course. 

Managing Items Between Terms

You may want to put items into an item bucket BEFORE archiving the course.

Create a statistical category for “Course” and assign this value to all items for that course. It may