Use Tiny URL to fix links

Yesterday I tried to make a link to an article from the New York Times Magazine in the Content area of my D2L course. I found a link to the full-text article in the Proquest Newspapers database. In theory this should have been a straight forward copy and paste job since the UWM Proxy server is already coded in the permanent URL for all Proquest links. (The Proxy is essential since it is the tool that prompts our off-campus users to login and allows them to use our resources remotely.)

Unfortunately this did not work! D2L reads the link a little bit differently in the Content area so it did not recognize the Proxy and instead sent me to a generic login page for the publisher. The fix: I took the pURL from Proquest and turned it into a TinyURL. TinyURL can take a long cumbersome link and create a redirect to a smaller, compact link that is easier for users to manage. It also fixed the problem I was having with my D2L content link.