Digital library
Textbooks, references and open learning resources.
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Westonia: Selected Works of Elizabeth Jane Weston
Bret Mulligan; Mary Ball; Felix Bieneman; Hannah Cohen · Pixelia Publishing · 2025
Elizabeth Jane Weston (1581-1612) was born in England, but spent most of her life in the intellectual hub of early-modern Europe: the imperial court of Rudolph II in Prague. She is remarkable for her determination to work professionally as a poet and to publish her writings, a path not generally open to women of the time. Her numerous Latin poems and letters were widely read and admired, both within the court and across the informal “republic of letters” that stretched across Europe. Although she became one of the most successful women poets in the history of Latin, her works have long been inaccessible to students in the absence of editions meant for the classroom. This volume presents, for the first time, a collection of Weston’s works in the original Latin alongside aids to her vocabulary and grammar.
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Documenting Community Stories: Arkansas Legends and Lore
Lauren Willette · University of Arkansas · 2025
Lesson Plans developed as part of Arkansas Folk and Traditional Arts’ Engaging Students with Folklore Documentation: Professional Development for K-12 Educators conference hosted at University of Arkansas, Mullins Library July 17-19, 2024. Supported by funding from Arkansas Humanities Council.
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American Encounters: Art, History, and Cultural Identity
Angela Miller; Janet Berlo; Bryan Wolf; Jennifer Roberts · Washington University Libraries · 2018
American Encounters provides a narrative of the history of American art that focuses on historical encounters among diverse cultures, upon broad structural transformations such as the rise of the middle classes and the emergence of consumer and mass culture, and on the fluid conversations between "high" art and vernacular expressions. The text emphasizes the intersections among cultures and populations, as well as the exchanges, borrowings, and appropriations that have enriched and vitalized our collective cultural heritage.
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Just YA
Sarah Donovan · Oklahoma State University · 2024
This open-access anthology features short texts that can be read in a single class period and are designed to spark deep conversations. Organized around themes of being, love, land, world, and futures, these poems, essays, and flash fiction offer inclusive and affirming perspectives to align with junior high and high school English language arts (ELA) curriculum. With contributions from acclaimed young adult authors, flash fiction writers, and teacher-poets, Just YA provides educators with contemporary texts that resonate with and inspire today’s students to write their own stories. The overall work, JustYA, is licensed CC BY. Each of the chapters, however, are licensed CC-BY-NC-ND. This means you may re-use and share portions of the book, but the authors request that individual pieces be left intact as originally written when used in subsequent works.
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Ancient Greek II: A 21st-Century Approach
Philip Peek · Open Book Publishers · 2025
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 550 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 identification of clitics and full words as well as 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 thirty entries by James F. Patterson, using a simplified morphophonemic approach to understanding language improve readers’ understanding of word formation, their vocabulary, and their ability to read and understand Ancient Greek. 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 II: 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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Learning Digital Photography
Eric Demattos · North Idaho College · 2024
This textbook is designed to guide you through the essential skills and techniques needed to become a proficient photographer. Over the course of this book, you will learn how to: Understand Your Camera: Get to know the functions and features of your camera, from basic DSLR models to advanced DSLRs and mirrorless systems. Control Exposure: Learn how to use aperture, shutter speed, and ISO to achieve the perfect exposure in any lighting condition. Harness Light: Explore the different qualities of natural and artificial light, and how to manipulate them to enhance your photographs. Master Composition: Discover the rules and guidelines that can help you create visually compelling images, including the rule of thirds, leading lines, and symmetry. Color Theory: Understand some of the basic color relationships and how to use them effectively in your images. Thinking Creatively: Exercise the creative side of your brain to see the world in a new way and develop creative ways to make your vision into pictures. Develop Your Style: Find your unique photographic voice by experimenting with different genres, from landscape and portrait photography to macro and street photography.
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Vocal Techniques for the Instrumentalist
Amy Rosine · New Prairie Press · 2021
Vocal Techniques, the course title used at many institutions, is essentially a voice class for instrumentalists, and is often a required course for instrumental music education majors seeking all-level certification. Students take at least one Vocal Techniques course to learn proper singing technique along with basic pedagogy. Some courses include teaching techniques as they apply to adolescent singers. The focus of the course is the development of the individual singing voice. This includes breathing, tone production, articulation, musicality and textual expression and understanding. Students also develop confidence in front of groups, improve their general vocal quality, and learn that a healthy voice serves them well in general and performance classrooms. The purpose of this text is to teach instrumental music education students about vocal production as it applies to solo singing. Beginning with a foundational understanding of breathing, singers will learn about the vocal instrument (anatomy), how to create clear, pleasant, tone (phonation and resonance), pronounce words clearly (articulation and diction) and the similarities and differences of singing technique when compared to that of their major instrument. This is the first textbook to explore teaching voice as it directly pertains to playing an instrument.
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Semillas: Elementary Spanish I
Gabriela Olivares; eden jones; Rachel Klevar; Giovanni Zimotti · University of Iowa · 2024
Semillas: Elementary Spanish I is a comprehensive introductory Spanish open-access textbook with reading, listening, speaking, and writing practice. This Open Educational Resource (OER) aims to help students begin learning Spanish in a comprehensive manner. This textbook was created in Pressbooks, a versatile platform that allows us to integrate interactive activities (h5p) and present authentic material such as video interviews with Spanish speakers and other resources. Grammar is not presented just as a standalone topic, but rather is seamlessly integrated into all parts of this book. To ensure that our textbook is diverse and inclusive we have built a team of writers who cross gender, age, and nationality. We have consulted with people whose voices represent diverse demographic segments of the Spanish-speaking world to include a plurality of pronunciations and appearances. We have elected to use the feminine as the base form in our vocabulary lists and have introduced students to non-binary endings. This textbook underwent a rigorous review process that included professionals from more than ten higher education organizations in the United States.
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Resonances: Engaging Music in Its Cultural Context
Esther Morgan-Ellis · University of North Georgia Press · 2020
Resonances: Engaging Music in Its Cultural Context offers a fresh curriculum for the college-level music appreciation course. The musical examples are drawn from classical, popular, and folk traditions from around the globe. These examples are organized into thematic chapters, each of which explores a particular way in which human beings use music. Topics include storytelling, political expression, spirituality, dance, domestic entertainment, and more. The chapters and examples can be taught in any order, making Resonances a flexible resource that can be adapted to your teaching or learning needs. This textbook is accompanied by a complete set of PowerPoint slides and learning objectives.
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History of International Relations
Erik Ringmar · Open Book Publishers · 2019
Existing textbooks on international relations treat history in a cursory fashion and perpetuate a Euro-centric perspective. This textbook pioneers a new approach by historicizing the material traditionally taught in International Relations courses, and by explicitly focusing on non-European cases, debates and issues. The volume is divided into three parts. The first part focuses on the international systems that traditionally existed in Europe, East Asia, pre-Columbian Central and South America, Africa and Polynesia. The second part discusses the ways in which these international systems were brought into contact with each other through the agency of Mongols in Central Asia, Arabs in the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, Indic and Sinic societies in South East Asia, and the Europeans through their travels and colonial expansion. The concluding section concerns contemporary issues: the processes of decolonization, neo-colonialism and globalization – and their consequences on contemporary society. History of International Relations provides a unique textbook for undergraduate and graduate students of international relations, and anybody interested in international relations theory, history, and contemporary politics.
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Zombie Apocalypse: Holy Land, Haiti, Hollywood
Terry Rey · North Broad Press · 2024
Zombie Apocalypse: Holy Land, Haiti, Hollywood explores the intellectual and cultural histories of two highly influential and essentially religious ideas, that of the zombie and that of the apocalypse. The former is a modern idea rooted in Haitian Vodou and its popular African and European religious antecedents, while the latter is an ancient one rooted in Zoroastrianism and the Bible and widely expanded in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and is arguably one of the most influential ideas in world history. Today the merger of the zombie and the apocalypse has pervaded popular culture, with the zombie surpassing the vampire and Frankenstein as the most prolific monster in popular American consciousness. Drawing on biblical studies, African studies, Caribbean studies, and the sociology and history of religion, Parts I (Holy Land) and II (Haiti) explore the religious origins of these ideas. Part III (Hollywood) uses aspects of cultural studies, literary analysis, critical race theory, and cinema studies to document the (primarily) American obsession with the zombie and the zombie apocalypse. The apocalypse and the zombie have been momentous intellectual, historical, and cultural realities and social forces in both very ancient and very recent human history and culture. As such, Zombie Apocalypse provides a focused analysis of certain fundamental aspects of human existence. It challenges readers to cultivate their critical thinking skills while learning about two of the most compelling notions in human religious history and the impact they continue to have.
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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.