February 2021

Welcome to the first issue of the new semester! We hope you are settling in well to your new routines. This month, we have news about the Open and Affordable Textbooks Program, our SOAR research repository, celebrations of Black History Month, and much more. Read on to learn What's Happening!

In this issue:

Apply for OAT Program Awards Now through April 7
New SOAR Repository Improves Discovery and Access to Rutgers Research
Course Reserves Now Integrated into Online Course Spaces
What's Trending on Social Media
This Month's Events

Apply for OAT Program Awards Now through April 7

Applications for Open and Affordable Textbooks (OAT) Program awards are open now through April 7, 2021.

Administered by Rutgers University Libraries, the OAT Program awards $1,000 research funds to full- or part-time faculty/instructors or curriculum developers at Rutgers who make their courses more affordable for their students through the use of low-cost materials, library content, or open educational resources.

In addition to the course redesign awards, this year we are piloting a new $3,500 research fund award for the creation and development of a completely new open textbook.

The Libraries have launched a new SOAR research repository to improve worldwide discovery and access to Rutgers scholarship.

SOAR: Scholarly Open Access at Rutgers is our institutional repository, dedicated to collecting and providing access to Rutgers research. Developed in 2015, SOAR supports the Rutgers Open Access Policy and serves as a platform to showcase and provide public access to Rutgers scholarship. Works deposited by Rutgers scholars are made available through the SOAR website and indexed by Google Scholar and other search engines where they can be discovered and read by researchers worldwide.

Rather than searching for them in QuickSearch, Course Reserves are now integrated into your online course space (Canvas, Blackboard, or Sakai).

In the course navigation, choose Reading List. You'll be able to easily see and access the required readings for each week. (Don't see it there? You can also search directly within the reading list tool.)

What's Trending

The latest from the Libraries on social media.

February's Events

Join us for online workshops, lectures, and activities throughout the month, including the following observations of Black History Month.

Dana Library: Celebrating Black History Month
Weekly throughout February

Dana Library is proud to be presenting a series of films, oral histories, and other resources that commemorate and honor the history and contributions of Black people in the United States. Join us as we explore them weekly throughout February.

Frederick Douglass Day Transcribe-a-Thon
February 15, 1:00–2:30 p.m.

Join us to transcribe the papers of Mary Church Terrell (1863-1954), an educator, civil rights activist, and one of the leaders of the women's suffrage movement. We will use the By The People platform of the Library of Congress.

Exploring Special Collections and University Archives: New Jersey Black History Resources
February 17, 4:00–5:00 p.m.

You’re invited to the first webinar of this new series, curators Erika Gorder and Christine Lutz will discuss Black history resources in Special Collections and University Archives.

Who Was Paul Robeson?
February 15, 2:00 p.m. & February 22, 11:30 a.m.

Join reference and instructional librarian John Powell to learn about the life of the Rutgers alum and activist for whom our library is named.