As anyone who follows this blog knows I have a bit of an interest OER and in particular e-texts. Higher Ed libraries seem to have been a little slow off the mark in acknowledging/supporting open texts. The attitude appears to be (understandably), ‘lets wait and see’, rather than, ‘the big wave is coming, let’s build a surfboard’.
Well not the good folks a Minnesota U.
“Minnesota launched an online catalog of open-source books last month and will pay its professors $500 each time they post an evaluation of one of those books. (Faculty members elsewhere are welcome to post their own reviews, but they won’t be compensated.) Minnesota professors who have already adopted open-source texts will also receive $500, with all of the money coming from donor funds.
“The project is meant to address two faculty critiques of open-source texts: they are hard to locate and they are of indeterminate quality. By building up a peer-reviewed collection of textbooks, available to instructors anywhere, Minnesota officials hope to provide some of the same quality control that historically has come from publishers of traditional textbooks.”
Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/05/10/university-minnesota-compiles-database-peer-reviewed-open-source-textbooks#ixzz1unOYJVg1
Inside Higher Ed
Here is a link to the University of Minnesota’s site
https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/
Well Done!