Articles tagged with: Faculty

  • Instructor self-serve option now available for reserves

    Tuesday, August 25, 2020 | By

    Instructor Self-Serve option for Library Reserves

    Brock University instructors are now equipped to directly add online course materials to Ares, the Library reserve system.

    While the Reserve Team remain ready to receive and process your requests as usual, the self-serve option gives flexibility to instructors who wish to do this work themselves.

    Step-by-step instructions are available to guide users through the process, and demonstrate two options:

    • beginning with the details for the resource in Omni, signing-in, and following the ‘Add to Reserves’ link
    • direct uploading within the Ares system.

    Video tutorials are also available. All materials linked from Omni or uploaded directly to Ares will get a final check for Copyright compliance, and will then be active for students.

    Questions? Please email reserve@brocku.ca

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  • Scanning service for print collection resumes

    Monday, August 10, 2020 | By

    A woman scans a book

    Brock University Library is pleased to announce that we are resuming our scanning service – and it’s easier and more convenient than ever. You can now request a scan of a book chapter or journal article right from within Omni, the Library’s academic search tool.  

    This service is available, free of charge, to all current Brock students, staff, and faculty.  

    When looking at a book or print journal in Omni, simply click on ‘Request a Scan’ and provide us the details about which chapter or page selection you want. Our team will pull the book from the shelves, scan your requested section, and email you within a few days. That email will include a link – click it, log in with your Brock ID and then download the PDF.  

    Please remember that we must abide by the guidelines in Brock’s Fair Dealing policy, which generally means one chapter from a book, one article from a journal issue, or up to 10% of the total work.  

    Note: Books available electronically through Hathi Trust Emergency Temporary Access Service are not eligible for ‘Request a Scan’. 

    Learn more about our scanning service and other supports.

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  • Brock joins HathiTrust to get students and faculty back to the books

    Monday, July 27, 2020 | By

    Library access to digital items such as online journals, electronic books, music and video has been relatively straightforward during the COVID-19 pandemic, but what about the millions of printed books lining the shelves of libraries?

    Brock University Library recently added a print pickup service and has now launched HathiTrust Emergency Temporary Access Service (ETAS), which provides electronic access to roughly one-third of the print books housed in Schmon Tower.

    This new service is based on an approach called controlled digital lending (CDL), which is the digital equivalent of traditional library book lending. It means a library like Brock’s can lend out a secured digital version in place of a physical book in its collection.

    In order to adhere to copyright laws, a library can only offer as many digital copies of a book as it physically owns. Digital rights management (DRM) technology is used to ensure a consistent “owned to loaned” ratio. If a digital copy is borrowed, the physical copy must not be lent out at the same time. So if a library owns two copies of a particular book, it could lend out two digital copies while the physical books themselves are inaccessible.

    “We are thrilled to be reconnecting students, staff and faculty with so many of our books that are otherwise inaccessible during COVID-19,” said Mark Robertson, Brock’s University Librarian. “This is especially crucial for members of our community who may be geographically dispersed during the shutdown. This is good news for teaching, learning and research at Brock.”

    Earlier this month, Brock Library became a member of HathiTrust, an organization focused on the preservation and improved access of print materials. Founded in 2008, it now provides legal access to more than 17 million digitized books and other material.

    Membership provides the opportunity to activate HathiTrust’s Emergency Temporary Access Service (ETAS), which is available when situations such as the current COVID-19 pandemic block traditional access to printed books.

    With this service now active, Brock students, faculty and staff will have CDL access to the approximately 30 per cent of the University Library’s books which are in HathiTrust’s digital library.

    “Activating ETAS allows us to provide digital access to works in our collection with a matching copy in HathiTrust, for as long as our physical collection is inaccessible,” said John Dingle, Acting Head of Collections for Brock Library. “Once the Library’s physical spaces have fully reopened and regular access to the print collection items is restored, our ETAS access will end.”

    For step-by-step instructions on how to use HathiTrust ETAS to access Brock-owned books and a full list of services and resources available during Brock’s COVID-19 response, see the FAQ section on the Library’s website.

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  • Course Reserves and the Challenge of Commercial E-Textbooks

    Friday, July 17, 2020 | By

    e textbook unavailable to library

    Ever since we closed the doors to our physical space in March, Brock University Library has been working diligently to provide alternative access to our print and physical collections. The latest developments on this front have been the launch of our book pickup service and the HathiTrust emergency digital collection. As we get closer to September, we are turning our attention to course reserves. Normally, a significant portion of course reserves would be print copies of textbooks, but the realities of the pandemic mean that we cannot offer any physical print reserves. To support instructors and the students in their courses, we have been exploring digital alternatives for print copies of textbooks. 

    The E-Textbook Challenge 

    When it comes to providing digital access to textbooks, however, the Library is hindered by the textbook publishers. Simply put, most textbooks are not available to libraries in any format other than print.  Most of the major textbook publishers — Pearson, Cengage, Houghton, McGraw Hill, Oxford University Press Canada Textbooks, Elsevier Imprints, Thieme — simply do not sell e-textbooks to libraries. This means that for courses that have adopted textbooks from these publishers, students who do not purchase the textbook have no alternative access to the textbook contents. 

    How the Library is supporting Instructors 

    We work with instructors to explore and identify viable textbook alternatives, including: 

      • Posting individual book chapters or excerpts and scanned copies of the content, subject to copyright limitations. Copyright permission will be sought where feasible in cases where the excerpt falls outside of fair dealing guidelines. 
      • Linking to content from the library’s existing collection of electronic resources (e-books, journal articles, streaming media, and other digital materials) or acquiring new content whenever possible. 

    Efforts will be made to secure online materials that are free from digital rights management restrictions (DRM) in order to ensure unfettered student access. DRM includes limits on the number of users that can access a resource at any one time, as well as limits on copying, printing and downloading. 

    The easiest way to get started with your course reserves is to submit your reading list on the Library’s course reserves webpage. If you have questions about how the library can support your course, email the Reserves team at reserve@brocku.ca. To ensure we can meet demand, we encourage submission of your reading list before August 4th, 2020. 

    If, as you prepare for your courses, you have questions about the finer points of copyright, please see our Copying for Teaching & Educational Purposes website for guidance and support.  

    With thanks to the University of Guelph for starting the conversation about the challenges of e-textbooks.

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  • Library supports Brock’s new Open Access Policy

    Thursday, June 18, 2020 | By

    With Brock becoming the 12th university in Canada to adopt an Open Access Policy, the Library is here to support researchers in making their work openly accessible. 

    The policy, recently adopted by Senate, calls for Brock researchers and scholars to deposit an electronic copy of their academic journal articles into the Brock University Digital Repository, an online collection of scholarly output produced by the Brock community and managed by the Library. 

    Researchers can submit work themselves to the repository or use a Library service called Support for Sharing Your Work – complete a form, attach your articles and Library staff will deposit them on your behalf. 

    More information about the open access policy, including answers to frequently asked questions and an opt-out form, can be found on the policy webpage. 

    For more information, contact Liaison and Scholarly Communication Librarian Elizabeth Yates – eyates@brocku.ca or your Liaison Librarian 

     

     

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  • Research made easy with Omni

    Tuesday, February 04, 2020 | By

    Just in time for the research crunch, we invite you to learn the tips and tricks of Omni, our new academic search tool. All students, staff, and faculty are invited to attend one of two hands-on workshops this week. Both sessions will be held in Matheson Learning Commons classroom A on

    • Tuesday, February 4 at 2 p.m., and
    • Thursday, February 6 at 10:30 a.m.

    Learn to:

    • discover collections at Brock and the 13 other partner institutions.
    • refine search results by availability, resource type, focused subjects, library collection, and more.
    • browse a virtual bookshelf using Virtual Browse.
    • follow citations from references within an article, and those that cite it.
    • pin, collate, and tag materials in your ‘favourites’ file for easy retrieval.
    • cite, email, and export to a citation tool to manage your information.

    You are welcome to just drop-in to a session however, students will earn CWC credit if they register first on ExperienceBU

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  • New year, new academic search tool

    Monday, January 06, 2020 | By

    Come explore Omni, our new academic search tool. All students, staff, and faculty are invited to attend one of three hands-on workshops this month.

    Learn to:

    • discover collections at Brock and the 13 other partner institutions.
    • refine search results by availability, resource type, focused subjects, library collection, and more.
    • browse a virtual bookshelf using Virtual Browse.
    • follow citations from references within an article, and those that cite it.
    • pin, collate, and tag materials in your ‘favourites’ file for easy retrieval.
    • cite, email, and export to a citation tool to manage your information.

    You are welcome to just drop-in to a session however, students will earn CWC credit if they register first on ExperienceBU

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  • How are you managing citations? Share your feedback

    Wednesday, November 13, 2019 | By

    Are you struggling with citations? Or do you have a great system for managing all your references for essays or scholarly papers?

    We want to hear about it! Please take a few moments to answer a short Library survey on citation management, which refers to the use of systems or software to store and organize references and format in-text citations and bibliographies. Results from the survey will be used to help the Library develop a strategy to support users’ citation management needs. Your responses will be anonymous.

    Anyone at Brock can respond. Survey participants can enter a draw for one of two $25 Brock cards.

    The survey closes Dec. 6 at 5 pm.

    Questions? Contact Elizabeth Yates, Liaison and Scholarly Communication Librarian at eyates@brocku.ca or x4469

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