open access

Join us on Thursday, October 27, at 10:30 a.m. in 90 Snell Library for a presentation on open textbooks. Michael Boezi, editorial director of Flat World Knowledge, the leading commercial publisher of open textbooks, will speak on “Keeping Education Accessible: The Textbook Affordability Crisis and Emerging Open Solutions.”
High textbook prices increasingly challenge the mission of many institutions to provide affordable, quality education. The emerging trend of open content is reshaping the publishing landscape, allowing for the rise of new business models that:

1. significantly reduce the cost of high-quality learning materials, and thereby the overall cost of education;
2. meet the growing demand for alternate, flexible formats that keep pace with the different ways we consume information; and
3. provide authors with a forward-looking compensation model.

Boezi will discuss the emerging trend of open content, examining the advantages (and challenges) of “open” as it relates to textbooks, as well as the economic, social, and technology drivers that are transforming education and propelling the growth of free, low-cost, and open alternatives to expensive, traditional college textbooks.

Refreshments will be served.

For a full schedule of our Open Access Week events, visit our News & Events page.

Join us on Wednesday at 1:30 in Snell Library room 421 for a panel discussion that is sure to engage both students and their instructors. Three Northeastern faculty members – Jeff Howe (Journalism), Joseph Reagle (Communication), and Heidi Wilkes (CPS) – will discuss Wikipedia, crowdsourcing, and social networking tools as components of the research process. There will be plenty of time for audience discussion afterwards.

⇒ Read an interview with Jeff Howe in the News@Northeastern, September 8, 2011: “The power of the ‘Crowd’”

⇒ Watch the trailer for Jeff Howe’s book, Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd is Driving the Future of Business.

⇒ Read an interview with Joseph Reagle in the News@Northeastern, August 16, 2011: “Cultural connections, a click away”

⇒ Watch a video of Reagle produced by the News: Joseph Reagle speaking on Wikipedia

Refreshments will be served.

For a full schedule of our Open Access Week events, visit our News & Events page.

Join us at 12:30 p.m. on Tuesday, October 25, in 90 Snell Library for a webcast on open science, hosted by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.

Michael Nielsen, author and an advocate of open science, will discuss opportunities for collaboration in the sciences using online tools such as blogs and wikis. In particular, the Polymath Project illustrates the possibility that such tools can be used to transform the way we work together to make scientific discoveries. Audience members will have the ability to participate in discussion via Twitter.

More information about the event is available here. For a full schedule of our Open Access Week events, visit our News & Events page.

Refreshments will be served.

Open Access Week, a global event now entering its fifth year, is an opportunity for the academic and research community to continue to learn about the potential benefits of Open Access, to share what they’ve learned with colleagues, and to inspire wider participation in helping to make Open Access a new norm in scholarship and research. Open access to information – the free, immediate, online access to the results of scholarly research, and the right to use and re-use those results as you need – has the power to transform the way research and scientific inquiry are conducted. It has direct and widespread implications for academia, medicine, science, industry, and for society as a whole.

During the week of October 24-30, the Northeastern University Libraries will host a series of events to celebrate Open Access. The events will cover a range of topics:

• open collaboration in the sciences
• the effects of Wikipedia and social networking on student research
• open access works by Northeastern faculty
• free and open college textbooks
• data gathering and storage needs of grad students

⇒ Click here to view the full schedule of events for Open Access Week.

The Library has supported Open Access in the Northeastern community since 2006 in the form of the University’s digital archive, IRis. The goal of IRis is to collect, manage, preserve, and share the intellectual output and historical record of Northeastern University. IRis provides open access to NU researchers who want to promote and preserve their materials, to NU students who require digital storage and promotion of their dissertations and theses, to NU administrators who need to save important university records, and to anyone who is seeking information on the intellectual productivity of the Northeastern community. Since its start, IRis has expanded to hold 531 faculty publications and approximately 600 dissertations and master’s theses. And since January 1, 2010, there have been over 230,000 downloads of full-text items from IRis, which include scholarly content as well as university archival content.

Building upon the success of IRis, the Library will soon offer a robust digital repository and preservation service to the campus for digital collections, images, media, and data, as well as accompanying metadata and consulting help.

Faculty: Have you heard about Open Educational Resources but aren’t sure how you might integrate them into your teaching?

Students: Want to find out how Open Educational Resources can help supplement your education at no cost?

On Wednesday, September 14, and Thursday, September 15, the EdTech Center, located in 215 Snell Library, is hosting the two-day EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) 2011 Online Fall Focus Session on Open Educational Resources. OERs include a wide range of online content, from recorded lectures to open textbooks to shared learning objects, and much more.

Here is the EdTech Center’s announcement about the event. The full program is available online as well, and individual sessions are kept short so you can stop by as your schedule permits to hear about topics of interest to you. All you need to do is register for the event at their website, take a look at the schedule, and come on over!

Coming Soon: Open Access Week!
October 24-30, 2011
And, if you’re interested in issues regarding open access to information in higher education, stay tuned for details to come soon about Open Access Week 2011! We’re planning a week full of events to celebrate, investigate, and discuss open access here at Northeastern.

In the meantime, check out our new guide to Open Access, which includes basic information as well as tons of suggestions for finding open journal content, open textbooks, open media resources, and more!