Open Education Week is a global movement to raise awareness and demonstrate the impact of open education. Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) defines open education as “resources, tools and practices that are free of legal, financial and technical barriers and can be fully used, shared and adapted in the digital environment.” University of Houston Libraries fully supports the use of open educational resources (OER) and providing open access to scholarship.

Together with the UH Office of the Provost, we are moving the OER initiative forward. In the past year, we have hired an open educational resources coordinator to lead the planning, implementation, and assessment of the UH OER program. We have created the Alternative Textbook Incentive Program (ATIP) to incentivize faculty members who adopt, adapt, or create an open textbook for use in their courses. We want to mitigate the high costs of textbooks for students as much as possible; the estimated first-round savings from the ATIP program is approximately $200,000. We are also conducting a survey to learn more about UH faculty who are using OER but are not involved with the ATIP program.

We have created a new repository for UH scholarship, Cougar Research Open Access Repositories (ROAR), which provides safe, long-term storage for data and scholarship produced by the UH community and allows it to be widely available to researchers around the world. With our faculty’s continued support and engagement, we can create and provide more services that benefit our students and scholars.

I’m pleased to announce that we are now accepting applications for the UH Alternative Textbook Incentive Program. As part of the University’s initiative to help mitigate the high cost of textbooks for students, the incentive program will award UH instructors who adopt, modify, or create an open or alternative textbook in their courses.

Instructors of record for a Summer 2019, Fall 2019 or Spring 2020 course are encouraged to apply to the UH Alternative Textbook Incentive Program by March 29, 2019. Awards of between $500 and $2500 will be made based on the estimated financial impact for students, type of alternative textbook project, and overall feasibility of the proposal.

Open educational resources (OER) offer an alternative to the problem of expensive textbooks for students. According to a recent survey conducted by the UH Student Government Association, over 37% of respondents have not purchased a required textbook due to the cost. By shifting to freely accessible and openly licensed teaching and learning tools, including textbooks, more students will have access to course materials, allowing them to be prepared for class on the first day, stay enrolled in the course, and perform better on course assignments.

I encourage you to attend one of our upcoming OER drop-in consultations to learn about the benefits of alternative textbooks and how you can get started on offering an alternative textbook for your course. Ariana Santiago, open educational resources coordinator, will be available in the Faculty Cafe during these hours and by appointment to discuss implementing open textbooks in the classroom and the support provided through the incentive program.

Please contact us at oer@uh.edu for more information.

Dear New and Returning Coogs,

Welcome to the University of Houston Libraries! We are here to help you have a successful semester. From assistance with your research to finding the right study space to checking out laptops and everything in between, you will see that there is so much available for you at UH Libraries.

To those of you who are new to the university, we’re so glad you’re here.  The UH Libraries comprises the M.D. Anderson Library, the Music Library, Architecture, Design and Art Library, and Health Sciences Library. Make sure to visit any of our libraries for events, resources, collections, and spaces designed to help you achieve your goals. And for those of you who are returning, you’ll find what you need among our world-class resources.

We are here for you. Please follow University of Houston Libraries on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to stay up-to-date, and do reach out with any questions or concerns. Best wishes for a very successful semester and again, welcome to the University of Houston.

Tuesday, November 27, 2018 is #GivingTuesday, a day of giving fueled by the power of social media, collaboration, and generosity. University of Houston Libraries joins the University’s special one-day campaign, #GivingCoogsDay, in concert with the global movement of giving.

Did you know that library use has a positive impact on student success? Your gifts allow us to introduce new spaces, create new services, and purchase resources that meet the ever-expanding needs of our community. It is the mission of UH Libraries to advance student success, knowledge creation and preservation, and globally competitive research, and #GivingTuesday is your opportunity to help us empower and transform the lives of our students, faculty, and campus community.

Charitable giving is personal; it expresses your deepest values and reflects your vision of the world and yourself. UH Libraries offers various opportunities for you to make a gift where it matters most to you. You may choose to give toward the Library Excellence Fund, a Library Endowment, Special Collections, Campaign Priorities, or as a commemoration to a loved one. I encourage you to browse and learn more about our many giving opportunities.

Help us spread the word about UH Libraries, #GivingTuesday and #GivingCoogsDay: after you’ve made your gift, share the news on social media and tag us in your posts with @UHoustonLib!

On behalf of the University of Houston Libraries, thank you for your support! Go Coogs!

Dear Colleagues,

How is your semester going? We at UH Libraries are thrilled to be your partners in teaching and research excellence! UH Libraries includes the MD Anderson Library, the William R. Jenkins Architecture, Design, and Art Library, the Music Library, and the new Health Sciences Library. You’ll find subject experts, specialized collections, and a wealth of services at each of our branches.

This month’s focus in our WHAT WHERE HOW library awareness campaign is on research services. UH Libraries has expanded its offerings in the research lifecycle, providing support in planning, conducting, and communicating research. With UH Libraries’ services, you can identify sources of data, including proprietary datasets; access data analysis and visualization software; and share your research data with broader audiences via Cougar ROAR and other repositories, to name but a few of our many options.

How can you make the most of all that UH Libraries provides in research support? Start with our Research Support menu and connect with our research experts.

If you haven’t done so, I’d like to invite you to take our quick services survey to tell us what’s most important to you. Your feedback will help us create and improve faculty-focused services.

Thank you for your partnership!

Dear UH Faculty,

Another exciting semester is underway at the University of Houston, and we at UH Libraries are thrilled to be your partners in teaching and research excellence! UH Libraries includes the main MD Anderson Library, the William R. Jenkins Architecture, Design, and Art Library, the Music Library, and the new Health Sciences Library. You’ll find subject experts, specialized collections, and a wealth of services at each of our branches.

At UH Libraries, one of our core values is Service Excellence. We are user-centered and work assiduously to create a high-quality user experience. We are deliberative in our interactions with users, anticipate their changing needs, and provide services that are targeted, empowering, innovative, and inclusive.

This fall, we’re pleased to launch the WHAT WHERE HOW library awareness campaign, in which we’ll be sharing information and stories about our variety of services and resources. Did you know that UH Libraries has expanded its faculty-focused services in a number of areas, including  including the use of digital tools through programs in the Digital Research Commons, repository services, and our open educational resources (OER) program? These offerings complement our existing menu of services and resources, such as interlibrary loan and our unique research collections in Special Collections.

How can you make the most of all that UH Libraries provides? Contact your subject librarian, browse our Find & Search menu, and attend our events and workshops.
Finally, I’d like to invite you to take our quick services survey to tell us what’s most important to you. Your feedback will help us create and improve faculty-focused services.

Thank you for your partnership!

Dear Students,

Welcome to the University of Houston. Did you know that library use has a positive impact on student success? From getting research help to finding the right study space to checking out laptops, you will see that there is so much available for you at UH Libraries.

To those of you who are new to the university, we’re so glad you’re here.  Make sure to visit your University Libraries for programs, collections, and spaces designed to help you achieve academic success.  And for those of you who are returning, you’ll find what you need among our world-class resources.

We know you’ll be successful, and UH Libraries is here to help you achieve your goals and dreams.

Two auspicious events occur in the month of May. The first is graduation, a time of celebration, recognition of hard work, and a launch pad for the rest of our graduates’ lives. The second event is Memorial Day. This past Monday, we honored those who have given their lives in defense of democracy. As I was thinking about both of these events, my mind wandered to the role that libraries serve in a democratic society. I believe the UH Libraries is critical to the mission of the University and to democracy. The Libraries’ mission is to advance student success, knowledge creation and preservation, and globally competitive research. We accomplish this through the creation, discovery, and preservation of knowledge and through the services, programs, and spaces we provide. We are a part of a larger ecosystem of libraries throughout the world with similar missions and collectively, we provide our constituents with the facts they need to make informed choices, decisions, and opinions.

Libraries collect and provide access to a wealth of information of all types – scientific research, government documents, social and cultural information, literature, music, arts and everything in between. We make that information available so that people can learn about anything they desire. Libraries facilitate learning and promote the pursuit of knowledge. Well-informed people are the cornerstone of a democratic society. In a letter to George Herbert Putnam, the eighth and longest-serving Librarian of Congress from 1899 to 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt wrote, “I have an unshaken conviction that democracy can never be undermined if we maintain our library resources and a national intelligence capable of utilizing them.”

What specifically does that mean for us at the University of Houston Libraries? It means we make collections accessible that enable our scientists to break new grounds in research. We make sure that we can provide access to government information. Our librarians can help you find the information that keeps our government accountable, and provides a record of how democracy works.

It means we have literature to spark creativity, music that performers can play, business databases for our finance students, and many other informative resources. It also means we have some of the brightest people I know who are collaborating with faculty to embed information literacy and critical thinking skills into their teaching. We want our students to graduate with tools that enable them to think critically.

It means we have archivists who are preserving our history and making it available for present and future scholars. It means we have people who describe this material and make it accessible so that you can discover it. In 2018, it means we employ library professionals who understand digital humanities and data visualization, and who create spaces to serve the learning styles of our students. It means that we create programs and services that facilitate and inspire learning and creativity.

It turns out that it is hard to find one definition of democracy – there are many different ones. I’m going to use the definition found in Cambridge Dictionary which says democracy is “the belief in freedom and equality between people, or a system of government based on this belief, in which power is either held by elected representatives or directly by the people themselves.” I believe people need knowledge, need to be able to think critically about what they hear and see, and then make informed decisions based upon that knowledge. Through the collections we make available, the services we offer, and the people who offer those services, libraries are an essential part of our democratic society.

When people feel passionately about something, there are often roots about the topic that are personal. This is true for me when it comes to the topic of open scholarship.

My brother had cystic fibrosis, a disease of the lungs and pancreas. In the early 2000s, his lungs had deteriorated enough so that he needed a double lung transplant. He and his wife lived in Wisconsin at the time and neither of them were enrolled or employed by a university. Dana was, and is, a teacher and Doug worked at Barnes & Noble. Both of them had master’s degrees and were skilled researchers…Doug was ABD in Philosophy. They performed many literature searches because they needed information on the procedure, prognoses, and any background information on the hospital and on the surgeon. Time and time again they found articles they wanted to read, only to find that those articles were inaccessible to them.

Because I was a professor at the University of Illinois at the time, I was able to access copies of the scientific articles they wanted. I had access to these very expensive, commercially published journals because my library had purchased them. For the majority of Americans who are not affiliated with universities that are paying for these journals, they are forced to pay high prices to access the scholarship that they need – scholarship that citizens can use to make what might be life and death decisions. This is a broken model. Universities are paying the salaries of the researchers who produce the scholarship, and then they are turning around and buying articles produced by those researchers in the form of library subscriptions. Universities are paying twice and citizens not affiliated with those universities do not have access. There is something wrong with this picture.

Many of us who work in the scholarly communication field are trying to change this situation. Funding agencies such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are mandating that publications resulting from their funding must be openly accessible online. Many governmental agencies, such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH), are requiring scientists to submit their final peer-reviewed journal manuscripts to PubMed Central upon their acceptance, and to make them accessible to the public within 12 months. The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) has been doing yeoman’s work, especially on the policy, advocacy, and communication fronts, to move the open agenda forward. The faculty of many universities, such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) faculty, have adopted Open Access (OA) policies. At the University of Houston, the Faculty Senate is moving forward with a task force for developing and implementing OA policy, and establishing a fund to help investigators pay for high-visibility Open Access papers.

Here in the Libraries, we’re pleased to announce a pilot of our new repository for UH scholarship, Cougar Research Open Access Repositories (ROAR). ROAR provides safe, long-term storage for data and scholarship produced by the UH community and makes these materials widely available to researchers around the world.

We encourage all to learn more about Open Access. Our goal is to highlight the power of Open Access to broaden the impact of research and scholarship in  practical and accessible ways for a more informed society.

I grew up before the internet was widespread. My sources of information were the morning and afternoon newspapers, along with my Saturday morning weekly trip to the Arlington Heights Memorial Library with my dad. We’d go there and he’d head over to the adult nonfiction section to see what new books came in that week. Then he’d head to his favorite area – the art and architecture books. He could spend hours there if he wouldn’t have had a list of things he wanted to get accomplished. Need to wire the basement? Go find a book in the library. Building a patio? Off to the library, he’d go. I would head to the children’s section. Sometimes I would ask questions of the librarians and often, I’d just sit on a stool in the middle of the rows of books, looking for the most recent Nancy Drew mystery, or looking for a biography of a woman such as Clara Barton or Harriet Tubman.

The Arlington Heights Memorial Library transformed my life. It brought a world of knowledge to me that I could have never imagined. Though I can’t say that I knew right then and there that I wanted to be a librarian, I have always felt proud of my career choice because I know the work that we do can transform the lives of our students, our faculty, and ourselves.

This week, we held a successful Dean’s Cabinet kickoff meeting. We have a wonderful array of advocates from all walks of life that have pledged to help me to raise funds so that we can continue to keep this library on an upward trajectory. As I’ve been thinking about why libraries are transformative, I’d like to share with you some of the important activities on which our library staff are collaborating with our faculty to help students have a successful experience here at the University of Houston. These are just a few of the many ongoing initiatives:

• We partner with the Office of Student Housing & Residential Life to provide library services in the campus residence halls. We offer workshops and individualized assignment support in the Cougar Village computer lab.
• We work with UH student athletes and their tutors in the Athletics Academic Center for Excellence.
• Our business librarians are embedded into the first course taken by students newly admitted to the Bauer College of Business to set the groundwork for good information-seeking behavior and analysis. They also work with students in the Wolff Center for Entrepreneurship, including the capstone project of developing their own businesses.
• One of our archivists works with classes that teach feminist research methods using materials in the Carey Shuart Women’s Research Collection, and supports a student project on 20^th century elections using the Houston and Texas History Research Collection.

We create opportunities in support of the Houston community by hosting various events such as LinkedIn @ the Library, which paired librarians and career services staff with students to improve their LinkedIn profiles and learn best practices for networking while they’re job hunting; and a workshop for grad students and post docs that featured publishers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, along with senior faculty, who gave guidance about best practices in publishing. Our Music Library teamed up with the UH Office of Sustainability to host a meetup on upcycle crafting.  Students created their own repurposed book bag using recycled plastic bags, unusable music scores, and recycled clothing.

The innovation that our librarians and staff bring to creating community activities blows me away. The work they do every day – teaching our students, acquiring, cataloging, circulating, and digitizing resources, and developing archives and creating new services – is so meaningful and worthwhile to the more than two million annual visitors to our libraries, and to those who met with our librarians for 33,439 reference consultations last year.

We truly are a community nurtured by curiosity and creativity that drives lifelong learning and scholarship. Our library employees truly embody this vision each and every day.