Author: Maura A. Smale

Maura Smale is Chief Librarian at the CUNY Graduate Center.
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Happy Open Access Week!

Open Access Week is here! There are lots of great events across the university this week, check out our Open Access Week 2013 page to see them all.

And of course there’s a dizzying array of blog posts, news, tweets, and other information about OA activities around the globe this week. Here are two that caught our eyes:

Open Access guru Peter Suber wrote a terrific article in The Guardian this week called Open Access: Six Myths to Put To Rest, a must-read for any open access fan who advocates for OA in their department, college, university, or profession.

Sarah Werner, a digital humanist who works at the Folger Shakespeare Library, wrote a great post on her blog about negotiating her contributor’s contract for a book chapter she authored. As Barbara Fister’s Library Babel Fish column in today’s Inside Higher Ed reminds us, book chapters often fall through the cracks when we talk about OA, and it’s great to see folks trying to free their work in books as well as journals.

Happy Open Access Week to all! Please share your thoughts, strategies, and observations in the comments.

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Two Open Access Week Programs @ City Tech

The Ursula C. Schwerin Library @ City Tech is delighted to offer two events during Open Access Week this year.

Textbooks: Why is there a problem? What are some solutions?

What are the problems with textbooks? Why do students sometimes resist buying and reading them? How is the landscape of textbook publishing changing, and how can we take advantage of new strategies and platforms to ensure that our students have access to high quality curricular materials? Come to this Open Access Week workshop to learn more about open educational resources! You’ll hear from faculty across the college who use these materials in their courses, and learn more about library resources and support for open educational materials.

Wednesday, October 23, 1-2pm
Faculty Commons, Namm Building, Rm N227

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Open Access Happy Hour: Open Access for the Arts

Using or producing creative works in online environments requires artists and scholars to work with a set of nuanced (and complicated) copyright, license, and use guidelines. Find out ways to use public domain and open access resources in your creative work, how open access advocates are working to protect the rights of artists in online environments, and how artists, technologists, and policy makers are working together to create avenues for sharing and collaboration in the information age. We’ll also discuss how content creators can license and share their own work.

Thursday, October 24, 4:00-5:30pm
Faculty Lounge, Atrium Building, Rm A632

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What are Open Educational Resources?

Open Educational Resources (OER) is a general term for learning resources that are free and web based. OER can be textbooks, online classes, or supplementary materials such as videos and websites. Teachers are encouraged to edit OER they find to fit the needs and focus of their course.

Why should you learn more about OER? Because if you supplement or replace your costly textbook with free OER you can save your students money. Using OER may also increase the chances that your students will acquire your course materials; the National Survey of Student Engagement reported in 2012 that 27% of first-year students and 34% of seniors “frequently did not purchase required academic materials due to their cost.”