CSU Libraries and Canvas

Research Guides, or LibGuides, are webpages created by CSU librarians to help students better find and use library resources and conduct the research they need to succeed in your courses. The library has a list of all Research Guides.      

You can embed Research Guides into your Canvas Course to provide easy access to library resources for your students. There are two options for embedding guides, the External Tool function or the External URL function. Which you choose depends on what your needs are. Instructions for both methods are detailed below.

You can use the External Tool function to embed a whole Research Guide, or even just a subset of the content.

Click on the "+" button at the top of the module where you want to add a Research Guide. Follow these steps in the pop-up window:

1. Select "External Tool" in the dropdown list.
2. Scroll down the list, and select "LibApps Library Content."
3. Select "Research Guides" from the LibGuides Site menu. 
4. In the Content Type menu, select "Full LibGuide." Note that, at this stage, you can also embed single pages or a simple database list, if you wish.
5. In the "Guide" menu, find the title of the guide you wish to embed. You can type the guide title into a search box at the top of the menu instead of scrolling through the entire list. 
6. Click on "Embed Content," and you will return to the main box.
7. Click "Add Item" to add the research guide to the module.

Using the External URL tool allows you to embed a Research Guide into a Canvas module. This method will embed the entire Research Guide into your Canvas module, and may look better than using the External Tool function. 

To embed a Research Guide using the External URL option, click on the "+" button at the top of the module where you want to add a Research Guide. Follow these steps in the pop-up window:

1. Select "External URL" in the dropdown list.
2. Enter the URL for the Research Guide. 
3. Type in the name you want for the page.
4. Click on "Add Item" to add the Research Guide to the module.