Uploading an HTML Bibliography with Many Links

[JordanGarciaNAU]

Good evening!

I had a faculty member approach me with a very interesting question that I can't seem to solve at the moment. He created a bibliography in html with a huge amount of links. These links are supposed to direct readers to pdf files.

Our campus came from Bbl, and the way he described it, all he had to do was upload the files associated with that html bibliography, and Bbl automatically connected those links with their respective pdfs.

In Canvas, when he uploaded this same html file, with the same content uploaded into his files folder, those links were not opening to anything. You'd click on them, and they'd go to a blank page. I know that he could go into the html page and link them with their respective files, but he definitely wants to avoid that route if at all possible because of the amount of links that he has.

Just to note: I know that links are usually associated with a url for instance, such as the location where the file would exist in Canvas, but he said that in his html compiler, he merely references the name of the file, and that was enough for Bbl to link them with its respective file. 

Any insight would be greatly appreciated here!

[Chris_Hofer]

@JordanGarciaNAU ...

To be sure, has the instructor also uploaded all the PDF files to the "Files" area within his Canvas course?  I wasn't clear, based on your description, if he had done that or not.

Also, how many PDF files are we talking about here?  You've said it's lots of files, but even if it was a lot of files and those files weren't going to change often from semester to semester, maybe it would be worth creating a content page within Canvas right away, knowing that it might take some initial time to link to the files.  But then at least down the road he would have that part done and maintenance of those documents might not take lots of time.  Without seeing this, though, it's difficult to know what kind of time this would take to complete.

Looking forward to hearing back from you soon.

[JordanGarciaNAU]

Chris thank you so much for your reply! Yes, the instructor has indeed uploaded all the PDF files to the files area within the Canvas course. How he described it, when he typed up this document in a WYSIWYG, the links were paths to the file name, and so when he uploaded those document files into his Bbl along with his html file, they were automatically connected because the file names were the exact same as those referenced.

Below is a snippet of the raw html code and underneath that is a screenshot from the html page.

                of science<o:p></o:p></span></u></b></font></p>
      <font face="Arial"><u>Readings:<o:p></o:p></u><br>
      </font> <font face="Arial"><br>
      </font> <font face="Arial"><span style="mso-tab-count:1"></span>Rosenthal

        &amp; Rosnow book (subsequently referred to as R&amp;R) <a
          href="RosenthalCh1.pdf">chapter 1</a> &amp; <a
          href="RosenthalCh2.pdf">chapter 2</a>&nbsp; (these are large
        files)<br>

So, in Bbl, when clicking on the link, it opened its respective file, without him having to manually l

[Chris_Hofer]

@JordanGarciaNAU ...

Thanks for the extra info and sharing the code snippet.  That makes sense to me what your instructor was trying to accomplish.  I think, though, that doing something like what either @SusanNiemeyer or I suggested yesterday would be the better option for your instructor.  Again, we know this might be a bit of extra work initially to get everything set up, but using the tools provided in Canvas rather than using HTML pages that have been created "offline" are going to be more beneficial for the instructor and the students down the road.  I agree with Susan that it sounds like the instructor is making things more complicated than they need to be.  My $0.02 ... for what it's worth.

[SusanNiemeyer]

A better solution than a page with a lot of links is to create a Module. Then he can create content pages and upload files into it.

He's just got to bite the bullet and do the work. Once he has set up his Module, then he can simply import it into future course shells.

His current approach sounds like a huge headache. He's making this too complicated.