Digital library
Textbooks, references and open learning resources.
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The LEARN Method: An Interactive Guide for Effective Learning
Karla Lassonde · Minnesota State Colleges and Universities · 2024
The LEARN Method is a program designed to teach students strategies to improve learning.
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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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Comparative Politics: A Practical Guide for a Globalizing World
Holly Oberle; Sadie Kelley; Juston Robson; Trevor Cook · Colorado Mesa University · 2024
Comparative Politics: A Practical Guide for a Globalizing World is perhaps the first to be written with an emphasis on case studies from the Global South and other alternative perspectives in comparative politics. This text focuses on themes and case studies that are often missing in more traditional comparative politics textbooks, and thus is best accompanied by other resources to give students a foundation in the fundamentals.
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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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Government Powers and Limitations
Kimberly Clairmont; Ethan Derstine; Alexandria Metzdorf; Stella Kemp · Oregon State University · 2024
This volume focuses on constitutional doctrine and law in the areas of government powers and limitations. It includes excerpts of landmark cases related to the judiciary and executive, contracts and takings clauses, and due process. The excerpts include the constitutional issues in these cases that are related to government powers and limitations with other questions of law and dicta omitted.
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Social Work Practice and Disability Communities: An Intersectional Anti-Oppressive Approach
Elspeth Slayter; Lisa Johnson · ROTEL · 2023
Designed as a main textbook for social work courses at the bachelor’s and master’s level or for social work practitioners in the field, this work moves beyond a traditional medicalized and segregated approach (i.e., chapters organized around impairments) to the exploration of disability-specific populations, instead taking a more intersectional approach in discussing specific service areas and practice issues while weaving in stories about the lived experiences of disabled people with a range of social identities. These issues include parenting, mass incarceration, ableism, aging, and employment, among many others. A key goal of this book is to introduce an intersectionality-informed and critically culturally competent approach to anti-oppressive social work practice with disabled people, primarily in the United States. To do this, we present an innovative practice model for social workers to use in their work with disabled people and communities, which is incorporated throughout the book in a variety of practice considerations. The main themes woven throughout our practice model are intersectionality theory, critical cultural competence, and anti-oppressive practice.
![Shared Voices: An Introduction to Cultural Anthropology [Revised Edition]](/api/files/covers/otl-1619.webp)
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Shared Voices: An Introduction to Cultural Anthropology [Revised Edition]
Demetrios Brellas; Vanessa Martinez · ROTEL · 2024
Shared Voices is a student-centered cultural anthropology mini textbook built with an equity lens. We are excited to share this with you all. This book attempts to address the lack of current, reliable, and relevant resources for introductory anthropology courses that center equity and anti-racism. We set out to create a culturally responsive and inclusive textbook with an anti-racist and global citizenry perspective. We center marginalized voices, stories, and community. This text is a starting point for any introductory anthropology course recognizing that cultural change is constant and the familiar is cousin to the weird and unusual. A work in progress, this text aims to provide students an opportunity to build content as they explore the topics within.
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Introduction to Statistics in the Psychological Sciences
Linda Cote; Rupa Gordon; Chrislyn Randell; Judy Schmitt · University of Missouri - St. Louis · 2021
Introduction to Statistics in the Psychological Sciences provides an accessible introduction to the fundamentals of statistics, and hypothesis testing as need for psychology students. The textbook introduces the fundamentals of statistics, an introduction to hypothesis testing, and t Tests. Related samples, independent samples, analysis of variance, correlations, linear regressions and chi-squares are all covered along with expanded appendices with z, t, F correlation, and a Chi-Square table. The text includes key terms and exercises with answers to odd-numbered exercises. Psychology students often find statistics courses to be different from their other psychology classes. There are some distinct differences, especially involving study strategies for class success. The first difference is learning a new vocabulary—it is similar to learning a new language. Knowing the meaning of certain words will help as you are reading the material and working through the problems. Secondly, practice is critical for success; reading over the material is not enough. Statistics is a subject learned by doing, so make sure you work through any homework questions, chapter questions, and practice problems available. Statistical knowledge gives you a set of skills employable in graduate school and the workplace. Data science is a burgeoning field, and there is practical significance in learning this material. The statistics presented in this book are some of the most common ones used in research articles, and we hope by the end of this OER you’ll feel comfortable reading (and not skipping!) the results section of an article. This work is broken into 14 chapters, covering the fundamentals of statistics, and hypothesis testing.
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Psychology of Language
Dinesh Ramoo; Marie Bartlett · BCcampus · 2021
In this textbook, students are introduced to the fundamental principles of linguistics and psycholinguistics. Students will explore theories and models of language development, comprehension and production as well as bilingualism and reading. All of these topics are approached from a Canadian perspective and include ideas from indigenous cultures and languages of Canada.
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Research Methods for the Social Sciences: An Introduction
Valerie Sheppard · BCcampus · 2020
This textbook provides a broad overview of research methods utilized in sociology. It will be of particular value for students who are new to research methods.
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Natural Resources Sustainability: An introductory synthesis
Christopher Lant · Utah Education Network Digital Press with Pressbooks · 2023
This text has evolved from 20 semesters teaching the undergraduate courses Geography, People, and the Environment and Environment and Society. It is designed for freshmen through junior-level courses at community, junior and four-year colleges and universities in the United States. Focused upon the dilemma of environmental sustainability, geography and the emergent field of ecological economics are emphasized in a trans-disciplinary framework. It provides—in a one semester or one quarter undergraduate course that requires no prerequisites—a fundamental background in the essentials students need to deal with natural resource and environmental issues as an informed citizen while building a foundation for further study.
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Finding Balance: Collaborative Workflows for Risk Management in Sharing Cultural Heritage Collections Online
Carrie Hintz; Melanie Kowalski; Sarah Quigley; Jody Bailey · University of Kansas Libraries · 2023
Digitizing rare and unique historical documents so they can be shared online is mission-critical work for most cultural heritage institutions, but it can be difficult to complete this work, especially intellectual property rights management, at a scale that matches user demand. The authors of this open educational resource offer guidance for creating scalable, cross-functional workflows using a risk-management approach that increases efficiency and distributes responsibility for rights assessment work more equitably across stakeholders. It includes advice for navigating knowledge gaps, building an engaged team with the right skillsets, reimagining workflows, and rethinking traditional archival processing workflows to build capacity for rights analysis during arrangement and description. Each chapter includes a helpful exercise for implementing this guidance in your own institution.
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Contemporary Issues in Collection Management
Kelsey Cameron; Chelsea Chiovelli; Danielle Deschamps; Marty Grande-Sherbert · Open Education Alberta · 2023
This edited, openly licensed, textbook examines several different issues in collection management. Topics covered include physical vs. digital collections; the impact of BookTok on collections; challenges to 2SLGBTQ+ collections ; ebook licensing; ebook pricing; accessible collections for users with physical disabilities; accessible collections for users with invisible disabilities; "just in time"/demand-driven acquisitions; climate change and collections and research data collections.
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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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Psychology of Human Relations
Stevy Scarbrough · Open Oregon Educational Resources · 2023
Understanding human relations is a valuable skill for anyone entering into the job market. The aim of this textbook is to aid readers in understanding their own behaviors and the behaviors of others with the intent of engaging in positive interactions in personal and professional spaces.
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Lost Without It: How GPS is more than just navigation
Chris McAlister; Deborah King; Samara Hoffmann · University of Southern Queensland · 2023
The navigation that we get from GPS is just a tiny component of how it impacts our lives - from banking to mapping to just knowing where stuff is, it's now a critical part of how humanity functions. This book takes you through all the basics of how GPS works, kind of like a how-to, just in case zombies take out all those smart scientists that keep it all running!
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ReCentering Psych Stats
Lynette Bikos · Seattle Pacific University Library · 2023
To center a variable in regression means to set its value at zero and interpret all other values in relation to this reference point. Regarding race and gender, researchers often center male and White at zero. Further, it is typical that research vignettes in statistics textbooks are similarly seated in a White, Western (frequently U.S.), heteronormative, framework. ReCentering Psych Stats seeks provide statistics training for psychology students (undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral) in a socially and culturally responsive way. All lessons use the open-source statistics program, R (and its associated packages). Each lesson includes a chapter and screencasted lesson, features a workflow for statistical decision-making, and includes all R code necessary to conduct the statistic. Research vignettes are drawn from the published psychology literature. When possible, these articles are authored by individuals who hold identities that have, been marginalized in the scientific literature; correctly use the statistic that is being taught in the lesson; and focus on issues of justice, equity, inclusion, or and diversity. When possible, lessons include interviews with researchers from the featured vignettes. Each chapter includes suggestions for practice that are graded in complexity, such that learners can choose the degree of challenge. ReCentering Psych Stats is perpetually-in-progress; suggestions for corrections or chapters are welcomed: ReCenteringPsychStats@spu.edu