Digital library
Textbooks, references and open learning resources.
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Scholarly Communication Librarianship and Open Knowledge
Maria Bonn; Josh Bolick; Will Cross · Association of College and Research Libraries · 2023
The intersection of scholarly communication librarianship and open education offers a unique opportunity to expand knowledge of scholarly communication topics in both education and practice. Open resources can address the gap in teaching timely and critical scholarly communication topics—copyright in teaching and research environments, academic publishing, emerging modes of scholarship, impact measurement—while increasing access to resources and equitable participation in education and scholarly communication. Scholarly Communication Librarianship and Open Knowledge is an open textbook and practitioner’s guide that collects theory, practice, and case studies from nearly 80 experts in scholarly communication and open education. Divided into three parts: What is Scholarly Communication? Scholarly Communication and Open Culture Voices from the Field: Perspectives, Intersections, and Case Studies The book delves into the economic, social, policy, and legal aspects of scholarly communication as well as open access, open data, open education, and open science and infrastructure. Practitioners provide insight into the relationship between university presses and academic libraries, defining collection development as operational scholarly communication, and promotion and tenure and the challenge for open access.
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Public User Services & Technology: a Primer for Librarians
Micah Bateman; Sera-Ann Hargrove · University of Iowa Libraries · 2026
Public User Services & Technology: A Primer for Librarians is an open-access introduction to the tools, concepts, and practices that shape technology-centered public services in libraries. Developed through an OpenHawks grant at the University of Iowa Libraries, the book features student-authored chapters edited by faculty and graduate staff, each aligned to a core topic in public user services. Designed for MLIS students, beginning librarians, and library workers, chapters may be read independently or used as modular instructional and training resources.
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Tools for RDS
Kay Bjornen · Oklahoma State University · 2022
This book was created for people who are new to Research Data Services programs and, as such, covers some basic principles as well as more advanced techniques that can help get an RDS program started at a university library. One of the goals of the “Research as Data-Data as Research” project was creation of a toolkit to provide a step by step guide for libraries, especially those with limited resources, to prioritize needs and create offerings with the assistance of their user communities. This toolkit is a collection of those resources, separated by the phase of the project. It is intended to be an evergreen, open resource. Please feel free to contribute ideas and examples that you think other libraries will benefit from.
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Introduction to the Pedagogy of New Literacies and Applied Critical Thinking
Kacy Lovelace · Marshall University · 2024
This textbook is an introduction to information and new literacies instruction in a variety of libraries and other information-related organizations and for a variety of patrons (including K-12, ESL, special needs learners, and adult learners). Topics include the history and theoretical bases of literacy instruction, instructional program development, and pedagogical and evaluation techniques. Featuring hands-on assessments for students pursing an Instructional Technology and Library Science emphasis, this text introduces new literacies, provides a comprehensive look at literacy instruction, literacy instruction improvement, and literacy instruction lesson planning with a focus on critical thinking.
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High Impact Instructional Librarianship
Mirah Dow; Amanda Hovious; Corey Ptacek · EdTech Books · 2024
The purpose of this new OER textbook titled High Impact Instructional Librarianship is to address what to teach and how to teach information literacy skills to library patrons of all ages and with many kinds of information needs. This OER is intended to facilitate and guide pre- and in-service librarians to know and use theory and models from many academic disciplines to inform practices, develop excellent instructional design skills, and express high confidence as instructional librarians no matter what position they hold in any library type.
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Dublin Core Quick Start
Caitlin Mathesis; Bailey VandeKamp; Micah Bateman · University of Iowa · 2024
This book is designed as a quick introduction to authoring metadata using basic elements from the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative.
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Peer Review: A Critical Primer and Practical Course
Emily Ford · Portland State University Library · 2022
This book is a self-paced, open access training in peer review. In eight modules it asks readers to engage in a variety of activities to learn the who, what, why, and how of peer review. It is geared to library professionals, library school students, or other academic professionals who must understand and/or engage with the peer-review process.
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Power, Profit, and Privilege: Problematizing Scholarly Publishing
Amanda Makula · University of Kansas Libraries · 2022
This open course introduces students to the scholarly communications system — with particular emphasis on the scholarly journal publishing mechanism — wherein new information is created, evaluated, disseminated, and preserved.
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International Libraries: An Open Textbook
Amanda Reed; Sarah Johnson; Heather Severson; Michael Green · The University at Buffalo · 2019
International Libraries: An Open Textbook is a reference sourcebook about the libraries and the field of librarianship in non-North American countries around the world. Each chapter in this volume includes a profile of a featured country’s variety of libraries, its library histories, its systems of library education, and its library practices, laws, and professional associations. Graduate students in the University at Buffalo’s Department of Information Science authored these chapters for the LIS 503: International Librarianship course during the summer term of 2019. The text was developed under the a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) as an open educational resource that can be adapted for future sections of the International Librarianship course or for similar courses offered in library and information programs at other institutions.
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Library 160: Introduction to College-Level Research
Iowa State University Library Instruction Services · Iowa State University · 2021
You will learn how scholarly information is produced, organized, and accessed; how to construct and use effective search strategies in a variety of web tools and scholarly databases; how to choose finding tools appropriate to the type of information you need; critical thinking skills in the evaluation of resources; and best practices in the ethical use of information.
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Health Sciences Collection Development: An Overview of Fundamental Knowledge and Practices
Medical Library Association Collection Development Caucus; Karen Gau; Iris Kovar-Gough · Virginia Commonwealth University · 2023
This work was created by members of the Medical Library Association’s Collection Development Caucus to provide librarians with key concepts about health sciences collection development. The chapters provide an overview of the responsibilities and tasks involved in the development and management of health sciences collections; it is recommended that readers refer to the references and further reading sections in each chapter for a more detailed look at each topic. The first edition was published in 2019 and was updated with a second edition in 2023. This updated edition has a new section on unique collection genres; addresses Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility in collections; incorporates significant updates to and expansion of previous content; and includes a glossary. New additions to each chapter, as applicable, include key communities and online courses for professional development.
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Making Open Educational Resources with and for PreK12: A Collaboration Toolkit for Higher Education
Anita Walz; Julee Farley · Virginia Tech Libraries · 2023
Higher education and PreK12 are vastly different domains. As such, well-intended, collaborative efforts between higher education and PreK12 do not always result in creation of useful and reusable learning materials for PreK12 classrooms or effective, productive partnerships. Making Open Educational Resources with and for PreK12: A Collaboration Toolkit for Higher Education is a toolkit of instructional resources designed to support higher education personnel who wish to improve or build strong and generative collaborations between higher education and PreK12 educators. The toolkit aims to expand use and re-usability of PreK12-centric learning resources through informed practices regarding copyright, open-licensing, and accessibility and includes a variety of resources: videos, presentations, transcripts, activities, guides, assignments, and assessment tools.
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Beyond the Horizon: Broadening Our Understanding of OER Efficacy
Kaitlin Schilling · Rebus Community · 2023
Beyond the Horizon: Broadening Our Understanding of OER Efficacy is a concise yet comprehensive resource designed to provide insight into the current state of research and reporting on Open Educational Resources (OER) efficacy. This guide explores existing frameworks, delves into key themes and gaps, and highlights emerging opportunities in the realm of OER efficacy.
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Making Ripples: A Guidebook to Challenge Status Quo in OER Creation
Kaitlin Schilling · Rebus Community · 2023
Making Ripples: A Guidebook to Challenge Status Quo in OER Creation is a short resource designed to expand your understanding of inequities in the educational systems through breaking down the work into smaller pieces with opportunities for you to reflect, identify strategies for action, and locate resources and community members to connect with. The purpose of this guide is to explore strategies for you as OER creators to incorporate equitable practices into your workflows.
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Cataloging with MARC, RDA, and Classification Systems
Reed Hepler; David Horalek · College of Southern Idaho Pressbooks Network (CSI) · 2023
This book goes over a wide range of cataloging schemata, tools, and norms. It presents a concise but thorough view of the basics of library cataloging practice.
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Introduction to Library and Information Science
Reed Hepler; David Horalek · College of Southern Idaho Pressbooks Network (CSI) · 2023
This book explores the history, present, and future of library science, both in theory and in practice. It examines the place of the librarian as arbiter of information access in a constantly-changing and modernizing global community.
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Contextualised open educational practices: Towards student agency and self-directed learning
Jako Olivier; Charlene du Toit-Brits; Byron Bunt; Amit Dhakulkar · AOSIS Publishing · 2022
This book covers original research on the implementation of open educational practices through the use of open educational resources at the university level. The emphasis on open education in this book is on contextualising resources, supporting student agency and fostering self-directed learning specifically within a South African milieu. The envisaged chapters cover conceptual and review research and empirical work focussing on open educational practices and the use of renewable assessments. The work starts off with an overview of an institutional-wide open education project that prompted the research followed by research on open education in terms of various modules in the health science, music education, law, philosophy, dietetics, anthropology, French language learning, journalism and political science. There is a clear gap in the literature on open education in terms of open educational practices, specifically in terms of contextualising resources, supporting student agency and fostering self-directed learning in a South African context. Despite the existence of some general works on open education in terms of policy, social justice and open textbooks, this book will be unique in exploring the intersections of openness, specifically with contextualisation, student agency and self-directedness.
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Using Open Educational Resources to Promote Social Justice
Kevin Adams; Murray Anderson; Elissah Becknell; CJ Ivory · Association of College and Research Libraries · 2022
As so often is the case, the idea for this book came from a twisting path. Not long after we began collaborating and presenting together at conferences, we were invited to draft a chapter on critical race theory (CRT) in academic libraries. An invited chapter is, of course, very flattering, so we proceeded without much thought to who the publisher would be. Angela had been working on social justice issues for a while at that point, while CJ had a wealth of expertise on open educational resources (OER). We merged our two areas of expertise in drafting that chapter, discussing OER as an opportunity to not only save students money but incorporate CRT into the curriculum—both in content and in practice. We submitted the final draft and were dismayed when we received the publication agreement. The publisher was unwilling to allow us to retain the copyright, even after we shared the licensing agreement that the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) Press uses as an example. In discussing how to proceed—should we submit this chapter somewhere else?—we realized that we were really excited about extending the discussion of OER beyond just ensuring that all students can afford to access their course materials. So we pitched the idea of an edited volume on this topic to a publisher that we know has publishing practices we support (chapter authors retain copyright and select the Creative Commons license they prefer for their work), and here we are! Our entrance to academic work on social justice was through a focus on CRT. We outline this background here but wish to emphasize that it explicitly addresses only one aspect of social justice. For us, the structural understanding of racism in the United States creates a foundation upon which to understand other structures of oppression as well as intersectionality.
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Enhancing Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility (IDEA) in Open Educational Resources (OER)
Nikki Andersen · University of Southern Queensland · 2022
This practical guide provides a framework and tips to enhance inclusion, diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility in Open Educational Resources.