As mentioned at the session yesterday with subject librarians, we now have access to Faculty Select, a new tool from EBSCO which provides a single search interface for finding open access textbooks.

Access Faculty Select

We are in the experimenting phase and we continue to work with EBSCO to iron out a few things with Faculty Select.

What’s our interest in Faculty Select? 

We are keen to promote the benefits of open access generally.  This was a tool we heard about last year and thought it sounded interesting and worth experimenting with.  Other reasons include:

• Textbook affordability for students and reducing barriers in textbook access for students
• Rising costs of eTextbooks for libraries
• Unwillingness of some publishers to sell their eTextbooks to libraries
• UC’s interest in moving into MOOCs

How you can help

• Have a play with Faculty Select and send us your feedback, ideas or questions.  If you are just testing/playing please put [Testing] after your name in the submission form to indicate to LAC staff that you don’t actually want to proceed
• Include Faculty Select in your conversations with academics as an option for sourcing open textbook content (encourage exploring open alternatives to the traditional textbook model generally)

More information

• EBSCO product information page
• Promotional video