Matthew Reidsma

Work Notes

Updates from the GVSU Libraries’ Web Team.
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Embedding Help and Chat in LibGuides and Blackboard

For liaisons who are trying to find new ways to integrate library services into our LMS (Blackboard) or LibGuides to support newly online or hybrid classes, here’s a way to embed our library’s chat/search help widget into another website. Thanks to Debbie for reaching out with the question - I hope the answer is useful to others as well.

This is not a chat widget that will send chats to you - this tool first searches the help site for any relevant articles about the user’s question, and then starts a chat with the UX and Operations Team. If you are looking to add a chat widget for users to chat with you, shoot me an email and I can help you get set up.

Blackboard

  1. On the Blackboard page you want, Create an “Item”
  2. Give it a title, like “Ask the Library” and then go to the text editor. Find the “HTML” button (second to last button) and click that. A new window opens.
  3. Paste this into that window (Make sure that your browser doesn’t make the quotes fancy—they need to be straight up and down quotes, not curly quotes):

<iframe width="90%" height="640" src="https://prod.library.gvsu.edu/labs/chat" title="Ask the library a question"></iframe>

  1. Click “Update”
  2. Now click Submit.

You should have an embedded chat widget in your Blackboard site!

Chat widget in Blackboard

LibGuides

  1. Get ready to edit the guide and page where you want the embedded content
  2. Create a new item in the box where you want to add the embed, and select “Media/Widget”
  3. Under “Name” choose something like “Ask the Library”
  4. Paste this under “Embed Code” (Make sure that your browser doesn’t make the quotes fancy—they need to be straight up and down quotes, not curly quotes):

<iframe width="90%" height="640" src="https://prod.library.gvsu.edu/labs/chat" title="Ask the library a question"></iframe

  1. Click “Save”

You should have an embedded chat widget in your LibGuide!

Chat widget in LibGuides

I know it’s fun to change the things in the angled brackets to make them fit better on the screen you are looking at, but don’t. Most of our LibGuides and Blackboard users are on phones. They are using tiny screens, not dual screen monitor setups in the corner of their dining rooms. :)