We often hear stories of students who don't buy their textbooks because they feel they can't afford them. While we understand the hard economic realities of being a college student, we also know that students ultimately hurt themselves when they don't have easy access to reading materials for their classes. It's true, textbooks are expensive, but that may change in the near future. In fact, FREE TEXTBOOKS are already being used on many college campuses.

You're probably asking yourself how a textbook could be free. In today's online environment, some enterprising new publishers are providing free access to the electronic version of a textbook, and then offering a print version at an affordable price. Flatworld Knowledge claims to be the first and largest publisher of free and open textbooks. Another nonprofit organization called OpenStax College is also commited to reducing costs for students by developing free textbooks.

We applaud these innovative new textbook publishing models as well as other Open Access initiatives around the country and the world.

Webinar: Efforts Towards Preservation of Digital Video

Date/Time: Friday, April 20, 2012 / 10:00am - 11:00am

Location: Gonella Discovery Room, KL 260

Individuals and institutions are creating digital video content at an unprecedented rate. In addition, video in older formats are being converted to digital files. How will all of this content be preserved? Is there a preservation format and access format standard for delivery of digital video? Are some formats more appropriate for preservation and access than others? Are there established digital video preservation methods? This webinar will discuss the basics of video digitization. We will also talk about the challenges of handling born-digital video and how cultural heritage institutions can mitigate some of these challenges. This is a webinar designed for people will little or no experience working with digitized and born-digital video in a preservation context. There will be plenty of time for questions as well.

The webinar will feature Jimi Jones, Adjunct Professor at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois.

Please join us for this informative webinar. Cookies will be served.

The UC Merced Library wants to hear what students think about our space, resources and services. If you can give us one hour of your time to participate in a focus group, you will receive a $25 gift certificate for the Bobcat Bookstore AND give us valuable feedback that will help us serve you better.

Sign up to participate in a focus group using this online form.

As part of the Graduate Student Lyceum Series of workshops, The UC Merced Library will host a session during the first week of April focused on Academic Publishing.

This workshop will focus on what graduate students should consider when submitting research for publication.  Journal impact factors as well as other considerations in the publishing process will be covered in this session, as well as benefits of open access models and the ability to maintain rights to your work. 

Date: Wednesday, April 4th
Time: 11am to noon
Location: KL371
Presenters: Emily Lin & Susan Mikkelsen, UC Merced Librarians

The debate over open access to federally funded research rages on. The Obama administration's Office of Science and Technology Policy will soon submit a report to Congress on how to deal with the contentious issues of how government-financed scientific research should be disseminated in the digital age.

Read more...

In a related turn of events, publishing giant Elsevier has withdrawn it's support for the Research Works Act, a bill that was already essentialy DOA in Congress.

Read more...