Moving Readings from ERes to Blackboard

We are phasing out our Docutek ERes system, since that functionality can be provided more effectively in Blackboard. Using one system (Blackboard) rather than two is also much easier for students, since they'll be able to find their online course materials in one place only (their Blackboard course), a place that is password-protected and limited to students enrolled in a particular course. The process of moving documents from ERes to Blackboard is not difficult, although it involves two distinct steps, which we will detail in separate Web pages:

• Downloading the PDF Files from ERes (Mac OS X Instructions)
• Uploading PDF Readings into Your Blackboard Course

As we mentioned in the Windows instructions (page opens in new window), most of the work of downloading the PDF files from ERes has already been done for you. You should have received an email message from us, with an attached spreadsheet that lists your various materials that were in the ERes system. The fields (columns) in the spreadsheet include the course name, term and year that the course was created in ERes, the title of the reading, the author, and the path to find the file (among others). Don't worry if you no longer have a copy of that email message or can't find it. The spreadsheet or spreadsheets are also included on the EResDocuments folder to which we are about to direct you.

We won't be maintaining these EResDocuments files indefinitely, so if you think you'll want to re-use many of your readings, the simplest solution is to copy the entire folder of materials to the hard drive of your computer, assuming that you have sufficient space on that hard drive. To copy those folders on a Macintosh:

1. On a Macintosh, you don't have default, "drive-letter" connections to various servers (called "mappings" in Windows terminology). Intead, you'll need to click on the Go menu (at the Finder level), and choose Connect to Server...:

   

2. Click on the "departments.netspace.bucknell.edu/Departments" share:

   

3. Find the "isr" folder (), and double-click on the folder to open it.

4. Find the "projects" folder (), and double-click on that folder to reveal its contents.

5. Find the "EResDocuments" () folder, and double-click on that folder.

6. You'll see a list of folders for each user who had materials on ERes. Scroll among the folders to find your username, and double-click on that folder to reveal its contents.

7. You'll see another list of folders whose names are numbers - the "docid" (document ID) number from ERes. Unfortunately, this is the structure that Docutek ERes system created when the PDF files were entered into the system - in other words, each reading was placed in its own folder, with the folder named according to the document ID. This folder (with your username as its title) is the "source folder", from which you'll copy the files that you need.

8. You'll now need to create the "destination folder": in other words, the folder to which you will copy all the readings. To do that, navigate to the Documents folder on your hard drive, click on the File menu, and click on New Folder:

   

9. Mac OS will create a new folder for you called "untitled folder". While the name is still highlighted in light blue, type in eres (or whatever you want the name to be), and hit the Return key when you are done.

10. Double-click on the new (eres) folder to open it.

11. You should now have two folders open on your computer (among other possible programs). The "eres" folder (or whatever you called it) will be the "active" folder, and folder with your username as its title (what we'll call the "username" folder) should be visible as well. Click on the "username" folder to make it the active window, click on the Edit menu, and then click on Select All:

    

12. While those folders are highlighted, click one on of the folders while holding the mouse button down, and drag the folders from the "username" window to the new (blank) "eres" folder that you created. Once the images of the folders appear in that new folder, let go of the left mouse button:

    

    Please note that your windows might not be in the same relative positions as shown in the figure above. Just make sure you are copying the folders from the "username" folder on the server to the blank "eres" folder on your hard drive.

    Since you are dragging files between two different drives (the server and your hard disk drive), Mac OS will copy the files from one location to the other. (It may take several minutes to copy all the folders, depending on how many files and folders you had in ERes.) Eventually, the "eres" folder (on your hard drive) will be the active folder, and all the ERes reading folders (from the server) will have been copied into it. You can close out the "username" folder window by clicking on the red close button () in the top-left corner of the window, since you no longer need that window open. You can also drag the "DEPARTMENTS" share to the trash (to disconnect from that drive), since you no longer need the connection to the server.

13. You have now finished the first part of the process. You can move onto the next step: Uploading PDF Readings into Your Blackboard Course.

Last revised November 14, 2007.  Please send questions or comments to itec@bucknell.edu.