Monday, April 15, 2019
Thank you to all who attended our WEMTA session on April 2; Many Voices, Many Resources: BadgerLink in Your Library! It was great to see so many librarians and technology staff excited about making BadgerLink more accessible in K-12 classrooms and libraries. We really enjoyed hearing from you and how you use BadgerLink in your classroom. Please share your story with us anytime!
For those of you who missed it, we reviewed three major components of BadgerLink access:
-
School logins
-
Direct resource links on library websites
-
Integration with Follett Destiny Library Manager
School logins
When students or school staff access BadgerLink resources from off the school’s network, often the IP from home or a mobile device is not registered in our system. Therefore, these users would need to login to access BadgerLink. Schools can create a login specific to their district, allowing students and staff access by using an identifier such as a school ID or lunch card number. This is similar to the general public logging in using their public library barcode number. If this school login is of interest at your district, let us know by selecting the Set up a School Login option on the Contact Us form.
Direct resource links on library websites
BadgerLink Resource URLs Google Sheet was shared, as well as discussion of organization of BadgerLink resources on library websites, with examples from a few school districts of varying size and website platform. Thank you to those librarians who were willing to share their district’s library website to spurn ideas for others attending the session! Feel free to Contact Us for assistance when needing to update links or logos on your own library website, and check out the BadgerLink on your Website page for helpful information.
Integration with Follett
Many districts in Wisconsin use Follett Destiny Library Manager and BadgerLink resources can be integrated into this tool, helping to bridge the connection between traditional library resources and online databases. During this breakout staff helped 13 new schools take the first steps in configuring access, gathered feedback on Follett’s Quick Reference Guide for setting up One Search for BadgerLink databases, and discussed adding articles found in BadgerLink to Destiny Collections in order to support instruction. We’re looking forward to continued collaborations with schools and Follett to improve this implementation. Get in touch if you would like to hear more!
Usage statistics of BadgerLink resources were also briefly mentioned as a great way to advocate for your library to administrators. If you would like to learn more about what statistics are available to collect and get that started, please let us know.
We’re brainstorming ways to make this session better in the future, but if you have presentation ideas or thoughts to share, please Contact Us!