Digital library
Textbooks, references and open learning resources.
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Principles of Business Statistics
Mihai Nica · OpenStax CNX · 2013
You are probably asking yourself the question, "When and where will I use statistics?". If you read any newspaper or watch television, or use the Internet, you will see statistical information. There are statistics about crime, sports, education, politics, and real estate. Typically, when you read a newspaper article or watch a news program on television, you are given sample information. With this information, you may make a decision about the correctness of a statement, claim, or "fact." Statistical methods can help you make the "best educated guess."
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Book of Proof
Richard Hammack · Richard Hammack · 2018
This is a book about how to prove theorems. Until this point in your education, you may have regarded mathematics primarily as a computational discipline. You have learned to solve equations, compute derivatives and integrals, multiply matrices and find determinants; and you have seen how these things can answer practical questions about the real world. In this setting, your primary goal in using mathematics has been to compute answers. But there is another approach to mathematics that is more theoretical than computational. In this approach, the primary goal is to understand mathematical structures, to prove mathematical statements, and even to invent or discover new mathematical theorems and theories. The mathematical techniques and procedures that you have learned and used up until now have their origins in this theoretical side of mathematics. For example, in computing the area under a curve, you use the fundamental theorem of calculus. It is because this theorem is true that your answer is correct. However, in your calculus class you were probably far more concerned with how that theorem could be applied than in understanding why it is true. But how do we know it is true? How can we convince ourselves or others of its validity? Questions of this nature belong to the theoretical realm of mathematics. This book is an introduction to that realm. This book will initiate you into an esoteric world. You will learn and apply the methods of thought that mathematicians use to verify theorems,explore mathematical truth and create new mathematical theories. This will prepare you for advanced mathematics courses, for you will be better able to understand proofs, write your own proofs and think critically and inquisitively about mathematics. This text has been used in classes at: Virginia Commonwealth University, Lebanon Valley College, University of California - San Diego, Colorado State University, Westminster College, South Dakota State University, PTEK College - Brunei,
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Introduction to the American Criminal Justice System: An Equity Lens
Roxie Supplee; Megan Gonzalez · Open Oregon Educational Resources · 2025
This introductory criminal justice textbook serves as a comprehensive resource for students to explore the key areas of the American criminal justice system. Students will examine the roles of the police, courts, corrections, and juvenile law. Additionally, the book introduces criminal theory, data, and legal principles. Beyond just studying these topics, students will have the opportunity to investigate potential careers and reflect on their roles and opinions within our legal system.
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Mental Disorders and the Criminal Justice System
Anne Nichol; Kendra Harding; Monica McKirdy · Open Oregon Educational Resources · 2025
This is an introductory textbook exploring the management and treatment of people with mental disorders throughout the criminal justice system.
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Introduction to Criminology: An Equity Lens
Jessica Peterson; Taryn VanderPyl · Open Oregon Educational Resources · 2025
Introduction to Criminology provides a foundation for understanding the origins, evolution, and current status of criminological theories. This textbook explains the field of criminology and influential theories in context, with real-life examples and activities. All content is delivered through a lens of equity, diversity, and inclusion. Each chapter includes bold-faced key terms with definitions and cross-references that link backward and forward to important concepts. Students can also engage with the content through discussion questions and supplemental resources at the end of each chapter.
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Becoming a Climate Conscious Lawyer: Climate and the Australian Legal System
Anna Huggins; Ellen Hawkins; Steven Tudor; Nicole Rogers · La Trobe University · 2024
As the world grapples with the escalating challenges of climate change, the legal profession finds itself at a crossroads. Becoming a Climate Conscious Lawyer: Climate and the Australian Legal System provides an original, innovative, and accessible analysis of the impact of climate change on legal doctrines and principles. It offers an overview of cutting-edge developments and how the transition to a low-carbon society is reshaping a wide range of laws, from corporate to criminal law, and beyond. This valuable new resource supports legal professionals, law students, and legal educators to understand current legal challenges – providing the know-how to strategically navigate, and positively influence, the development of law to respond to a climate changed world. The book delivers a transformative approach to legal education: equipping law students to become climate-conscious professionals with the confidence and competency to deliver legal solutions to a diverse range of clients, and promote climate justice across diverse communities.
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Introduction to Criminology
Shereen Hassan; Dan Lett; Leah Ballantyne · Kwantlen Polytechnic University · 2026
Although this open education resource (OER) is written with the needs and abilities of first-year undergraduate criminology students in mind, it is designed to be flexible. As a whole, the OER is amply broad to serve as the main textbook for an introductory course, yet each chapter is deep enough to be useful as a supplement for subject-area courses; authors use plain and accessible language as much as possible, but introduce more advanced, technical concepts where appropriate; the text gives due attention to the historical “canon” of mainstream criminological thought, but it also challenges many of these ideas by exploring alternative, critical, and marginalized perspectives. After all, criminology is more than just the study of crime and criminal law; it is an examination of the ways human societies construct, contest, and defend ideas about right and wrong, the meaning of justice, the purpose and power of laws, and the practical methods of responding to broken rules and of mending relationships. Special thanks to Leah Ballantyne, LLB LLM, a Cree lawyer from the Mathias Colomb Cree Nation in Pukatawagan, Manitoba, who provided expert Indigenous consultation/editing for this textbook.
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Civil Rights and Liberties
Rorie Solberg; Kimberly Clairmont; Petar Jeknic; Sarah Mason · Open Oregon Educational Resources · 2023
This volume focuses on the constitutional doctrine and law in the areas of civil rights and liberties. It contains excerpts of landmark cases covering the first amendment, second amendment, fourteenth amendment and the right to privacy. The excerpts include the constitutional issues in these cases that are related to civil rights and liberties with other questions of law and dicta omitted.
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Marine Law and Policy for Scientists and Managers
Holly Campbell · Oregon State University · 2019
This open educational resource is designed for use by undergraduate and graduate ocean science, natural resource, fisheries and wildlife, and environmental policy students enrolled in a ten-week academic quarter. The purpose of this project is to provide students and non-law professionals with a freely accessible, clearly written guide to support engaging and effective learning. As such, the book serves as a gateway and an invitation to become a well informed, committed and involved ocean citizen as well as to explore the field beyond our course study.
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Introduction to the American Criminal Justice System
Alison Burke; David Carter; Brian Fedorek; Tiffany Morey · Open Oregon Educational Resources · 2019
There is a dearth of OER textbooks in Criminology and Criminal Justice, which made creating this textbook all the more exciting. At times we faced challenges about what or how much to cover, but our primary goal was to make sure this book was as in-depth as the two textbooks we were currently using for our CCJ 230 introduction course. The only way we were willing to undertake this project as if it was as good, or better than the current books students read. We have had very positive feedback about the required textbooks in the course but consistently heard how expensive the books were to buy. We also needed to ensure we met the learning outcomes outlined by SOU for a general education course, as well as the state of Oregon, to make sure this textbook helps students meet those outcomes.
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Wetlands Law: A Course Source
Stephen Johnson · CALI's eLangdell® Press · 2024
This is the revised, fifth edition of The Wetlands Law Course Source. It can be used as the primary text for a two credit seminar or as a supplemental text to cover wetlands material in an environmental law, natural resources law, or water law course. In addition, the administrative law chapter can be used as a supplement in a range of administrative law-related courses, such as environmental law, health law, labor law, immigration law, and others, to introduce basic administrative law concepts. Unlike traditional casebooks or coursebooks, a “course source” includes resources to train students in all three apprenticeships identified by the Carnegie Foundation in its influential report on legal education, Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law. To address the knowledge apprenticeship, the Wetlands Law Course Source includes all of the traditional elements of a casebook or coursebook (cases, commentary, notes and questions) and includes several hypotheticals and problem exercises that focus on reinforcing wetlands law. In addition, as one of the many forms of summative and formative assessment included in the book, every chapter includes one or more CALI exercise as a “quiz” to reinforce the material covered in the chapter. To address the skills apprenticeship, the Wetlands Law Course Source includes sixteen separate legal research exercises, several drafting exercises, a negotiation exercise, and an interviewing and counseling exercise. To address the values apprenticeship, the Course Source includes several professionalism scenarios, with questions related to the scenarios. The Course Source also incorporates a wealth of audio/video materials and external links to bring the cases, disputes and materials in the book to life, including the audio for the oral arguments in most of the principal cases excerpted in the book, a Google map identifying the location of the properties involved in all of the principal cases excerpted in the book, decision docu
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Computer-Aided Exercises in Civil Procedure
Roger Park; Douglas McFarland · CALI's eLangdell® Press · 2014
The sixth edition, first published as an ebook, and this seventh edition carry forward the philosophy and structure of the earlier editions. This book is not a comprehensive treatise on the subject of civil procedure, yet it provides a mixture of expository text, cases, and self-testing questions in nearly all of the major areas of the subject. In order to maximize accessibility, flexibility, and compatibility of the book, the authors have chosen CALI's eLangdell Press to publish and distribute the sixth edition (as chapters) and this revised seventh (as a complete book) electronically with a Creative Commons license. Publishing a law textbook electronically with far fewer restrictions than most commercial books and using a somewhat new, boutique outfit such as eLangdell Press is an unconventional choice, to say the least. But the authors share the eLangdell vision of more flexible teaching materials for professors and more cost-effective books for students. Professors may now edit and remix this work to match their teaching without worry of copyright infringement. Students may now adopt this book, read it using any number of software or devices, and even print it - all for free. The book's authors, like its publishers, believe that this new book model represents an important and long overdue step forward in the way law school books are published. All the exercises have been substantially revised for this edition. The individual exercises also are reorganized and expanded so that they follow a more standardized pattern: expository text on the topic area, work-book questions, and introduction to the related online CALI lessons. This book, and the accompanying interactive exercises known as CALI Lessons available online through the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI) at www.cali.org, are intended to provide a challenging educational experience. For each exercise, students should read the text in this book and answer the questions before accessing the
![The Data Renaissance: Analyzing the Disciplinary Effects of Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, and Beyond [Revised Edition]](/api/files/covers/otl-1718.webp)
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The Data Renaissance: Analyzing the Disciplinary Effects of Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, and Beyond [Revised Edition]
J.J. Sylvia IV · ROTEL · 2024
The Data Renaissance delves into the complexities of data's role in various industries and its broader impact on society. It highlights the challenges in investigating data practices, citing examples like TikTok, where algorithms and data handling are closely guarded secrets. The content, contributed by students under the guidance of an expert, covers a wide range of topics, including the ethical aspects of generative AI in education and the workplace, and case studies reflecting real-world experiences. This evolving text, intended to be updated with each class, serves as a dynamic resource for educators and students alike, offering insights and discussion guides for an in-depth understanding of the ever-changing landscape of data in our digital age.
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Introduction to Narrative Journalism
Benjamin Wielechowski · UM-Dearborn Open Education · 2021
This textbook was created for beginning narrative journalists exploring the craft. It is inspired by the Narrative Journalism course (JASS/COMP/ENGL 310) at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, and it is intended to be used as a guide and handbook. It is structured around the five elements of fiction, and provides both instruction and student examples of various narrative journalism projects.
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Writing for Electronic Media
Brian Champagne · Rebus Community · 2017
Welcome to Writing for Electronic Media, an OER textbook. OER stands for Open Educational Resource, which means it’s free for all who access. Since it is electronic, I will do what I can to keep it updated with the changing media. People’s viewing habits are changing as they migrate to mobile sources, social media, and kitten videos.Television News is still a dominant #1 source, and radio is still the safest way to stay informed in your car. Hopefully, you already have some journalism background. This book does not teach the who, what, when, where, why, and how of reporting; its goal is to teach how to present the journalism you already know via electronic media, primarily television.
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Digital Foundations: Introduction to Media Design with the Adobe Creative Cloud
xtine burrough; Michael Mandiberg · Open Oregon Educational Resources · 2017
Digital Foundations uses formal exercises of the Bauhaus to teach the Adobe Creative Suite. All students of digital design and production—whether learning in a classroom or on their own—need to understand the basic principles of design in order to implement them using current software. Far too often design is left out of books that teach software for the trade and academic markets. Consequently, the design software training exercise is often a lost opportunity for visual learning. This revised edition updates the original text for use with Adobe Creative Cloud 2017 software.
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OER: A Field Guide for Academic Librarians
Andrew Wesolek; Jonathan Lashley; Anne Langley · Pacific University Press · 2018
We intend this book to act as a guide writ large for would-be champions of OER, that anyone—called to action by the example set by our chapter authors—might serve as guides themselves. The following chapters tap into the deep experience of practitioners who represent a meaningful cross section of higher education institutions in North America. It is our hope that the examples and discussions presented by our authors will facilitate connections among practitioners, foster the development of best practices for OER adoption and creation, and more importantly, lay a foundation for novel, educational excellence.
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Media Studies 101
Erika Pearson · BCcampus · 2013
Media Studies 101 is the open educational resource for media studies studies in New Zealand, Australia, and Pacifica. We have constructed this text so it can be read in a number of ways. You may wish to follow the structured order of 'chapters' like you would in a traditional printed textbook. Each section builds on and refers back to previous sections to build up your knowledge and skills. Alternatively, you may want to go straight to the section you are interested in -- links will help guide you back to definitions and key ideas if you need to refresh your knowledge or understand a new concept.This text is open under a Creative Commons NZ BY license.
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Original Études for the Developing Conductor
Jonathan Caldwell; Derek Shapiro · Virginia Tech Publishing · 2023
Original Études for the Developing Conductor is a collection of supplemental études designed to enhance contemporary conducting pedagogy by amplifying the voices of composers from historically excluded groups. Each étude was commissioned from and composed by a living composer, the majority of whom are woman-identifying composers and/or composers of color. Each étude also addresses multiple specific pedagogical goals common to all conducting classrooms. Conducting textbooks commonly include musical examples to expose student conductors to various musical challenges and situations. However, due to the relative ease of using only music from the public domain, most examples found in commercially published books are excerpts of larger works composed by deceased cisgender white men of European descent. Often, this music bears little relation to a significant portion of the music contemporary students engage with and perform. These excerpts also tend to be quite short (i.e., less than a minute) and do not create cohesive, self-contained musical arcs. Instructors adopting or reviewing this text are encouraged to record their use on this form: https://bit.ly/original-etudes-interest. This helps the book's sponsors to understand this open textbook's impact. This project was made possible in part by financial support from the University Libraries at Virginia Tech Collaborative Research Grant, University of North Carolina at Greensboro University Libraries’ Textbook Affordability Program (TAP) Grants, and additional funding, technical, and publishing support from the Open Education Initiative of the University Libraries at Virginia Tech.
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Applied Developmental Systems Science: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Theories, Meta-Theories, Methods, and Interventions but Didn't Realize You Needed to Ask. An Advanced Textbook
Ellen Skinner; Thomas Kindermann; Robert Roeser · Portland State University Library · 2015
This textbook provides a toolbox, a guidebook, and an instruction manual for researchers and interventionists who want to conceptualize and study applied problems from a developmental systems perspective, and for those who want to teach their graduate (or advanced undergraduate) students how to do this. It is designed to be useful to practitioners who focus on applied developmental problems, such as improving the important developmental contexts where people live, learn, and work, including the applied professions in education, social work, counseling, health care, community development, and business, all of which at their core are concerned with optimizing the development of their students, clients, patients, workers, citizens, and others whose lives they touch.