Digital library
Textbooks, references and open learning resources.
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Communicating Fashion: Trend Research and Forecasting
Gozde Goncu Berk; Marilyn DeLong · University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing · 2023
Communicating Fashion offers a holistic view of the interrelationships involved in trend research, including data collection, analysis and reporting, and forecasting what that direction means for design. The book’s primary focus is on the process of observing and collecting desk and field data to understand interrelationships among products, user experience, and contextual factors.
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Reading Social Science Methods
Ann Reisner · University of Illinois Library - Urbana · 2023
Science has great potential to benefit society, but this potential comes with risks as well. Directed at introductory level social science and humanities majors, this textbook teaches the rules and limits of social science methods. Reisner starts from the assumption that it is not necessary to be able to do research to read and judge the soundness of research publications. The chapters guide students through an explicit set of rules for reading research articles developed from three common research methods: content analysis, survey research, and experimental method.
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Teaching Apparel Production
Sheri Deaton · University of Arkansas · 2023
This text was written to provide students and teacher candidates with an introductory understanding of the skills associated with teaching apparel production. The book is broken into units and chapters that focus on essential skills for constructing garments and, more specifically, teaching others how to construct apparel and apparel-related products. Readers are invited to explore this text in any order, as it is not necessary to read each unit or chapter in sequence. Embedded within each chapter are key concepts related to the topic, pedagogical tips and tricks, a variety of resources, and references
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World History Since 1500: An Open and Free Textbook
John Rankin; Constanze Weise · East Tennessee State University · 2023
World History Since 1500: An Open and Free Textbook is designed to cover world history from 1500 to the present in 15 chapters. The OER-supported textbook can be downloaded as a pdf or viewed online. The textbook serves to weave insights from many perspectives into stories and narratives that will help students develop a framework to organize and connect ideas, geographical locations, and timelines allowing them to think critically and broadly about the world around them. In addition to helping students master the sequence and scope of world history from 1500, the textbook helps develop empathy for people who live and lived in different parts of the world and during different historical times leading to the creation of empathic and knowledgeable global citizens who are aware of and concerned about the world around them.
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Foundations of Aural Skills
Timothy Chenette · Utah Education Network Digital Press with Pressbooks · 2022
Foundations of Aural Skills is a research-based, accessible, relevant, creative, inclusive, empowering textbook for teaching introductory aural skills. The first seven chapters provide thorough instruction in aural fundamentals, allowing students to build their foundations from a variety of starting points. The following chapters address the traditional tasks of sight-reading and dictation, but also improvisation, mimicking music you hear (“playback”), transcription, and ensemble skills. The final two chapters add some basic form- and chord-listening skills. Every section includes creative activities that learners can try out on their own or do in class. Embedded playlists for practicing listening skills include a diverse range of music that will connect with students’ preferences and allow them to experience music they haven’t worked with before. While the text is primarily designed for a first semester or year of instruction, it also includes some instruction on modulation, chromaticism, and mixed meter, and future additions/development will make these advanced applications more robust.
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Public Speaking as Performance Subtitle: Practicing Public Speaking in the Theatre & Performance Classroom
Mechele Leon · University of Kansas Libraries
Public Speaking as Performance: Practicing Public Speaking in the Theatre & Performance Classroom is an innovative public speaking textbook written by theatre educators. It combines the essential elements of speechwriting with the tried and true skills that actors learn to communicate a story to an audience. In chapters such as “Actor Tools for Public Speakers” and “From Page to Stage,” the textbook provides students with a creative and accessible approach to delivering speeches. Drawing on the tradition of teaching public speaking in theatre and drama departments—a practice that is still maintained in some institutions—this textbook emphasizes the performative nature of communication. Educators teaching public speaking in theatre and performance departments will find this a textbook particularly suited to the interests of their students.
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Symbiotic Posthumanist Ecologies in Western Literature, Philosophy and Art: Towards Theory and Practice
Peggy Karpouzou; Nikoleta Zampaki · Peter Lang · 2023
Through the burgeoning fields of Posthumanities and Environmental Humanities, this edition examines the changing conception of human subjectivity, agency, and citizenship as shaped by the dynamic interplays between nature, technology, science, and culture. The proposed ‘symbiotic turn’, (the awareness of the multitude of interactions and mutual interdependencies among humans, non-humans and their environment) aspires to explore the complex recompositions of the “human” in the 21st century. By organizing and promoting interdisciplinary dialogue at multiple levels, both in theory and practice, Symbiotic Posthumanist Ecologies is suggested as a new narrative about the biosphere and technosphere, which is embodied literarily, philosophically, and artistically.
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#TheatreAppreciation
Kiara Pipino · SUNY Oneonta · 2022
#TheatreAppreciation is a textbook for introductory level lecture classes such as Theatre Appreciation and Introduction to Theatre. It provides insight about the art and craft of theatre, a brief exploration of theatre history, and discussion about the styles and forms of theatre along with an overview of professions in the field.
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Elementary Arabic I
Sadam Issa; Ayman Mohamed · Michigan State University · 2022
This open textbook is intended for beginning students of Arabic in their first semester. This OER is unique in its presentation of Arabic language content through theme-based modules. Each theme is addressed through vocabulary, grammar, reading, speaking, and writing components. Each chapter includes self-check embedded quizzes that help learners digest language concepts. The book is also designed with teachers in mind. Each chapter includes pair work and group tasks that the teacher can implement in class and other parts that can be assigned as homework. The focus of the book is to build literacy in Standard Arabic structure in a simplified and sequenced approach while emphasizing speaking skills. By the end of this course, students will be well prepared for building their competence in a sequenced and organized manner in the following parts of this series.
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Music on the Move
Danielle Fosler-Lussier · University of Michigan Press · 2020
Music is a mobile art. When people move to faraway places, whether by choice or by force, they bring their music along. Music creates a meaningful point of contact for individuals and for groups; it can encourage curiosity and foster understanding; and it can preserve a sense of identity and comfort in an unfamiliar or hostile environment. As music crosses cultural, linguistic, and political boundaries, it continually changes. While human mobility and mediation have always shaped music-making, our current era of digital connectedness introduces new creative opportunities and inspiration even as it extends concerns about issues such as copyright infringement and cultural appropriation. With its innovative multimodal approach, Music on the Move invites readers to listen and engage with many different types of music as they read. The text introduces a variety of concepts related to music's travels—with or without its makers—including colonialism, migration, diaspora, mediation, propaganda, copyright, and hybridity. The case studies represent a variety of musical genres and styles, Western and non-Western, concert music, traditional music, and popular music. Highly accessible, jargon-free, and media-rich, Music on the Move is suitable for students as well as general-interest readers. Citable link: https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.9853855
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Where Does Art Come From?
Leah McCurdy · Mavs Open Press · 2022
Who am I? What is beautiful? Where do babies come from? These questions populate our lives and inform our perceptions of the world. Explore these questions according to the expressions of artists from all over the world. Go beyond Western art to consider where art comes from and how it impacts all of us.
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Introduction to Philosophy: Aesthetic Theory and Practice
Yuriko Saito ; Ruth Sonderegger ; Ines Kleesattel · Rebus Community · 2021
Aesthetic Theory and Practice offers fresh perspectives on canonical and emerging topics in aesthetics, and also brings attention to a number of culturally sensitive topics that are customarily silenced in introductions to philosophical aesthetics. The papers are heterogeneous in terms of length and degrees of difficulty, inviting the reader into the study of contemporary aesthetics, which spans a lifetime.
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Documentary Making for Digital Humanists
Darren Reid; Brett Sanders · Open Book Publishers · 2021
This fluent and comprehensive field guide responds to increased interest, across the humanities, in the ways in which digital technologies can disrupt and open up new research and pedagogical avenues. It is designed to help scholars and students engage with their subjects using an audio-visual grammar, and to allow readers to efficiently gain the technical and theoretical skills necessary to create and disseminate their own trans-media projects. Documentary Making for Digital Humanists sets out the fundamentals of filmmaking, explores academic discourse on digital documentaries and online distribution, and considers the place of this discourse in the evolving academic landscape. The book walks its readers through the intellectual and practical processes of creating digital media and documentary projects. It is further equipped with video elements, supplementing specific chapters and providing brief and accessible introductions to the key components of the filmmaking process. This will be a valuable resource to humanist scholars and students seeking to embrace new media production and the digital landscape, and to those researchers interested in using means beyond the written word to disseminate their work. It constitutes a welcome contribution to the burgeoning field of digital humanities, as the first practical guide of its kind designed to facilitate humanist interactions with digital filmmaking, and to empower scholars and students alike to create and distribute new media audio-visual artefacts.
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Ancient Greek I: A 21st Century Approach
Philip Peek · Open Book Publishers · 2021
In this elementary textbook, Philip S. Peek draws on his twenty-five years of teaching experience to present the ancient Greek language in an imaginative and accessible way that promotes creativity, deep learning, and diversity. The course is built on three pillars: memory, analysis, and logic. Readers memorize the top 250 most frequently occurring ancient Greek words, the essential word endings, the eight parts of speech, and the grammatical concepts they will most frequently encounter when reading authentic ancient texts. Analysis and logic exercises enable the translation and parsing of genuine ancient Greek sentences, with compelling reading selections in English and in Greek offering starting points for contemplation, debate, and reflection. A series of embedded Learning Tips help teachers and students to think in practical and imaginative ways about how they learn. This combination of memory-based learning and concept- and skill-based learning gradually builds the confidence of the reader, teaching them how to learn by guiding them from a familiarity with the basics to proficiency in reading this beautiful language. Ancient Greek I: A 21st-Century Approach is written for high-school and university students, but is an instructive and rewarding text for anyone who wishes to learn ancient Greek.
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Fundamentals of Music Theory
Nikki Moran; Michael Edwards; Richard Worth; Zack Moir · University of Edinburgh · 2021
This open e-book is the result of a project funded by a University of Edinburgh Student Experience Grant, Open e-Textbooks for access to music education. The project was a collaboration between Open Educational Resources Service, and staff and student interns from the Reid School of Music. As a proof-of-concept endeavour, the project aimed to explore how effectively we could convert existing course content into convenient and reusable open formats suitable for use by staff and students both within and beyond the University. The resulting e-book presents open licensed educational materials that deal with the building blocks of musical stave (sometimes known as staff) notation, a language designed to communicate about musical ideas which is in use around the world. The resources in this e-book include video lectures and their transcripts, as well as supporting text explanations, examples and illustrations. The materials introduce topics such as the organisation of discrete pitches into scales and intervals, and temporal organisation of musical sounds as duration, in rhythm and metre. These rudiments are presented through an introduction to the elements of five-line stave notation, and through critical discussion of the advantages and limitations served by notational systems in the representation and analysis of musical sounds. This serves as the basis of further explanations, to illustrate musical concepts including key, time signature, harmonisation, cadence and modulation. We anticipate that subsequent versions of this e-book will update and develop the contents and presentation of the materials, following the success of this student-led collaboration.
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The Bright Continent: African Art History
Kathy Curnow · MSL Academic Endeavors · 2018
This book aims to act as your map through the world of African art. As such, it will help you define the competencies you need to develop–visual analysis, research, noting what information is critical, asking questions, and writing down your observations–and provide opportunities for you to practice these skills until you are proficient. It will also expose you to new art forms and the worlds that produced them, enriching your understanding and appreciation. This is an ongoing project. Your text will not be complete the day you first click on it, but will be written as we proceed through the course. Because it will be used for other courses beyond your own, you may find that it includes materials beyond those your class demands. Encourage your curiosity–chase after it.
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Tutt* a tavola!
Stacy Giufre; Melina Masterson · UMass Amherst · 2021
This new open educational resource is for Elementary Italian. Our goal is for this book to be comprehensive, user-friendly, inclusive, and cost-effective. Tutt* a tavola has two parts, one for each course, with six chapters in each. Generally speaking, each chapter addresses three to four grammatical topics and includes a vocabulary section related to a cultural theme. The vocabulary is also incorporated into the grammatical presentations and exercises. There is also a short reading in each chapter regarding different aspects of culture and language, to address those questions of diversity and inclusion that are often missing from the textbooks we have used in the past. To include more culture, we have also included multimedia: each chapter begins with a song that is used as a starting point for the inductive presentation of the chapter’s content, and ends with a video (a film clip, an interview, social media) that summarizes the ideas covered.
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CITOYEN.NE.S: Conversation en Français
Annabelle Dolidon · Portland State University Library · 2021
CITOYEN.NE.S is a French language method for the conversation class at the intermediate/ advanced level. Content and activities are built around the concepts of diversity, inclusivity and equity, and engage students to practice French while questioning and participating in the world they live in – to be full citizens whatever their background, their race or their gender identity. As the French spelling of the title indicates, the book embraces écriture inclusive and uses it for instructions and general information for all students. The book is composed of five chapters covering various themes. None of them provides again basic vocabulary from first- and second-year French courses, like food and body parts. Instead, each chapter builds on students’ previous knowledge and takes them further to develop language and cultural skills. Each chapter presents a mix of vocabulary lists and activities, authentic documents and others that have been written for the book, based on research. Chapters end with creative activities and one overarching assignment that help students go deeper in topics of interest. Early chapters have two grammar reviews, later chapters only one.
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Guide to Byzantine Art
Evan Freeman; Anne McClanan · Smarthistory · 2021
The “Beginner’s guide” introduces foundational concepts, such as the chronology of Byzantine history, sacred imagery, and wearable objects. Subsequent sections are arranged chronologically, covering the Early Byzantine period (c. 330–700), the Iconoclastic Controversy (c. 700s–843), the Middle Byzantine period (843–1204), the Latin Empire (c. 1204–1261), and the Late Byzantine period (c. 1261–1453) and beyond. These sections include thematic essays on Byzantine art and architecture, essays that focus on key works (subtitled artworks in focus or architecture in focus), and essays that explore Byzantium’s relationships with other cultures (subtitled cross-cultural perspectives). Finally, we have included questions for study or discussion to encourage teachers, students, and other readers to engage with videos and other content on the Smarthistory website which could not be included in this book format but which we believe richly compliments what is presented here.
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Music in World Cultures
Matthew Mihalka ; Justin Hunter · University of Arkansas · 2021
This text provides just a small sampling of some of the various musical styles and traditions that might be found, though the skills developed in this course can be applied to any type of music.