Welcome to the July issue of the EdLib Report, a monthly newsletter/blog that offers education and library science updates about USF Library news, e-resources, technology tips, digital archives, Web sites, videos, and blogs.I am available most of the summer and I am always happy to support whatever you do in your teaching and your research.
Sincerely,
Susan Ariew
Academic Services Librarian for Education & Library Science
Recently an instructor at USFcontacted a publisher to put together a course pack for his course. He and the publisher identified 22 readings from a variety of sources which would end up costing students close to $145.00 a piece. Out of the 22 readings, 17 of them were available in full-text journal articles carried by the USF Tampa Library. Thus, the students would be paying twice for the same material. Their tuition dollars help support the library budget for full-text subscription e-journals; yet students were going to pay again for the same articles printed up in their course packs. Luckily, the instructor contacted the library and was offered better alternatives to the expensive course pack for his class.
In thinking about your students and course packs, you might want to consider the following:
1) Are the readings on your syllabus ones that students can access on their own with some library instruction?
With a little lead time, collaboration, and planning, I can assist you in providing either
instruction, tutorials, or information you can place in Blackboard about accessing needed articles.
2) Are there readings not available online that you can put on e-reserve with the help of the library?
There are e-reserve services available to you to scan and offer access to selected readings (within fair use guidelines) from inside your Blackboard course. This too will help student budgets.
The staff at USF Tampa library is more than happy to help with supporting you in providing students with
the readings and the information that they need. This Web page form is the request for placing items on e-reserve.
3) Are there e-books that can be purchased for supplementary readings?
If a book you want on reserve is available as an e-book, the library can purchase it so it will be available to your students electronically
Covering the period from 1905-1983, Library and Information Science Retrospective database, from H.W. Wilson indexes articles and book reviews of key library and information science periodicals. Books, chapters in collected works such as conference proceedings, library school theses, and pamphlets are also indexed. Coverage also includes the full text of Wilson Library Bulletin from 1914 to 1983. This is a comprehensive index to the literature with over 1,200 periodicals and citations to more than 500,000 articles. USF also subscribes to the current file, Library Literature & Information Science Full Text that covers from 1984 to the present, with full text beginning in 1994. Literature & Information Science Retrospective is an index to library and information science content but does not contain the full text of that content.
This database was acquired in partnership with the School of Library and Information Science. Special thanks to the SLIS faculty for helping to create this opportunity for the USF Libraries and the USF community.
I first discovered Sherman Dorn's blog when I read Jay Mathews' article in the Washington Post article, "Favorite Education Blogs of 2008." I've enjoyed keeping up with it on a regular basis.
Mathews writes, "Dorn is a professor at the University of South Florida and the current editor of Education Policy Analysis Archive, a key online peer-reviewed journal about education policy. His site sometimes points at key issues that are bubbling in the profession. Like me, he is a participant in the Education Policy Blog. Dorn is among the great original thinkers of education wonkery."
This latest video from Project Information Literacy offers student voices and statements about why the research process is so frustrating. It doesn't have answers, but it highlights where students need the most help in grappling with their research projects.
Sponsored by the Anti-DefamationLeague, ADL describes itself as the "nation's premier civil rights/human relations agency," this site provides "a collection of original lesson plans and resources that help K-12 educators integrate multicultural, anti-bias, and social justice themes into their curricula." Collections offer general information, lesson plans, bibliographies, Web links, graphics and handouts designed for classroom use. Themes include anti-semitism and judaism, constitutional issues, hate and extremism, Holocaust and genocide studies, immigrants and immigration, name-calling and bullying, Native American and Indegienious People, People with Disabilities, Racism and Racial Diversity, Religious Diversity, and Sexism and Gender Issues. Offerings at this site are focused, authoritative, and of high quality.
Featured on the June 29th post of the Library of Congress Blog is a nice article about The Teaching with Primary Sources Resources (TPS) tescher site. There are some great links here for teachers interested in using primary sources in their classes.
The Smithsonia Institution Libraries collection includes thousands of images representing a small portion of the more than 1.5 million printed books and manuscripts in their collections. One can browse or search for images. Topics include animals, art and design, bones and ossils, plants, history, inventions, technology, transportation, culture, trade literature. There is also a link for educational and classroom use of the online collection.
You'd think that students would embrace e-only textbooks because they don't have to break their backs carrying them around campus. Not so. This Chronicle of Higher Education Information Technology Report article by Jeffrey Young talks about some interesting lessons learned about e-textbooks and reading devices used in a pilot study at Northwest Missouri State University.
Google Books via kwout
Google Books has added some new features that allow users to embed previews of books into websites or blogs with a simple html snippet. Google has also included better searching inside of public domain and partner books with sort capabilities. For more details see "Inside Google Book Search."
