LibGuides is a content management system developed by Springshare, a software-as-a-service company that makes several packages aimed at library customers. The Brown University Library uses LibGuides to publish online guides that help students and researchers discover appropriate library resources for their scholarly work. LibGuides is a common platform used by thousands of libraries[1], with basic templates and simple tools that allow librarians to share their knowledge, without having to learn the ins and outs of web publishing.
Instructional Design Librarian Sarah Evelyn asked me if there was any technological way that we could make LibGuides content show up in online Canvas[2] courses. Canvas supports the Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) standard, but the version of LibGuides we use does not, nor does it have an open API.[3]
We met with Ed Casey and Marc Mestre, of CIS’ Instructional Technology Group, to develop a plan that would allow us to systematically include LibGuides content into Canvas. CIS shared with us information about how Canvas courses are constructed, including how standard course/SIS IDs from the Registrar’s Office are used to programmatically generate course identifiers. Each department has a three- or four-letter identifier unique to the department’s area of study (for example, Physics courses use PHYS as an identifier). We decided that we could use these identifiers in LibGuides to create a connection to Canvas.
The Library publishes two types of guides — subject guides and course guides. A subject guide includes links to journals, databases, and other resources on a particular topic. For example, we have a subject guide for Italian Studies (ITAL). A course guide is developed in collaboration with an instructor, highlighting resources that are relevant for use with that particular course, for example, this guide for an Italian Studies course on Machiavelli (ITAL0981).
I developed a schema to tag each subject guide with its SIS identifier, prepending an S- for subject guides, or C- for course guides, which Sarah added to each relevant LibGuide (using the examples above, the Italian Studies subject guide was tagged S-ITAL, and the Machiavelli course was tagged C-ITAL0981). Library programmer Yvonne Federowicz developed a system to harvest the tags from LibGuides into a database, and wrote a programatic service that makes those tags available to Canvas. Marc, in turn, wrote a feature in Canvas that uses that data service to create a direct link from any course to it’s related subject guide and, if available, its specific course guide. The new feature is available to any course when an instructor simply drags the “Brown Library Resources” item into the Course Navigation tab in Canvas Settings. 
We hope that this feature will help students to easily discover high-quality scholarly resources, and more readily connect with the subject librarians in their areas of study.
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[1] https://www.springshare.com/libguides/
[2] Canvas is a learning management system used widely at Brown.
[3] Springshare’s LibGuides CMS product does support LTI, but we use the lighter LibGuides v2 product, so the LTI was not available to us.