Library Index
Academic Earth has curated links to over 750 online courses and 8,500 individual online lectures from leading universities. Founded in 2008 by Richard Ludlow, Chris Bruner, and Liam Pisano, with the mission of "giving everyone on earth access to a world-class education." The initiative was backed by an angel investor group, including four Yale professors, Honest Tea founder Barry Nalebuff, and Pulitzer Prize winner Daniel Yergin. In 2012, Academic Earth was acquired by CMN.com, a leader in consumer driven-content strategy with a strong online presence in higher education. Academic Earth is headquartered in Seattle, WA.
[Access is by username/password.] An EBSCOhost research database. "Designed for academic institutions, this database provides complete coverage of multidisciplinary, full-text academic journals. The capacity of content within this resource fully supports scholarly research in the key areas of academic study by providing peer-reviewed journals, full-text periodicals, reports, books, and much more."
List of free and open access resources published by the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO), "an umbrella organisation whose goals are to promote and support digital research and teaching across arts and humanities disciplines, drawing together humanists engaged in digital and computer-assisted research, teaching, creation, dissemination, and beyond, in all areas reflected by its diverse membership."
AGORA - Access to Global Online Research in Agriculture
[Access to licensed material is by username/password. Please contact the library for login details.] AGORA is one of the four public-private partnerships in the Research4Life program , which seek to help achieve the UN's Millennium Development Goals by providing the developing world with access to critical scientific research. AGORA provides access to one of the world’s largest collections of agricultural literature, offered by the leading publishers.
"The American Institute of Mathematics (AIM) seeks to encourage the adoption of open source and open access mathematics textbooks. The AIM Editorial Board has developed evaluation criteria to identify the books that are suitable for use in traditional university courses. The Editorial Board maintains a list of Approved Textbooks which have been judged to meet these criteria. "
[Access is through the Iraq Virtual Science Library, by username/password].
"AIP Publishing's portfolio includes 17 highly cited research journals, and the Conference Proceedings series."
National Bureau of Economic Research
AMS - American Mathematical Society
[Archived issues of the Notices of the ACM , the Bulletin of the ACM, and numerous mathematical research journals are available through this website ]. "The AMS, founded in 1888 to further mathematical research and scholarship, has maintained an active publishing program for over 100 years and has established a reputation as one of the top publishers of advanced mathematics in the world."
Ancient World Online, The (AWOL)
"The primary focus of the blog will be notice and comment on open access material relating to the ancient world, but it also includes other kinds of networked information as it becomes available. The ancient world here is conceived as it is at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University. That is, from the Pillars of Hercules to the Pacific, from the beginnings of human habitation to the late antique / early Islamic period." [summary from WorldCat]
[Access through the Iraq Virtual Science Library, by username/password].
"Since 1932, Annual Reviews has offered comprehensive, timely collections of critical reviews written by leading scientists. Annual Reviews volumes are published each year for more than 41 focused disciplines within the Biomedical, Life, Physical, and Social Sciences including Economics."
[Access is by username/password.] ARDI is one of the four public-private partnerships in theResearch4Life program , which seek to help achieve the UN's Millennium Development Goals by providing the developing world with access to critical scientific research. ARDI is a program administered by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in cooperation with itspartners in the scientific and technical publishing community with the aim to increase the availability of scientific and technical information in developing countries.
"arXiv is an e-print service in the fields of physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance and statistics. Submissions to arXiv should conform to Cornell University academic standards. arXiv is owned and operated by Cornell University, a private not-for-profit educational institution. arXiv is funded by Cornell University Library, the Simons Foundation and by the member institutions."
"The preeminent Internet publisher of literature, reference and verse providing students, researchers and the intellectually curious with unlimited access to books and information on the web, free of charge."
"A major STM journal publisher of 116 online and print journals, 150 plus open access journals, and related print/online book series, Bentham Science answers the information needs of scientists in the fields of pharmaceutical, biomedical, medical, engineering, technology, computer and social sciences."
"The Berkman Center's Interactive collection features conversations with and talks by leading cyber-scholars, entrepreneurs, activists, and policymakers as they explore topics such as: the factors that influence knowledge creation and dissemination in the digital age; the character of power as the worlds of governance, business, citizenship, and the media meet the Internet; and the opportunities, role, and limitations of new technologies in learning."
Scholarly publications on matters related to the Internet, law, and society, known as the Berkman Publication Series, which is jointly published with the Social Science Research Network (SSRN)
"Bookboon's free online textbooks for students are focused and to the point. They are all written by highly respected professors from top universities in the world and cover topics such as economics, statistics, IT, engineering and natural science."
The BISI funds and carries out "research and public education on Iraq and neighbouring countries." It offers free pdf downloads of its newsletter, and it publishes the refereed journal Iraq, which is covered in JSTOR from 1934 to 2012.
"A 'one-stop' resource for critical information needed for the selection of supplemental electronic learning resources aligned to the California State Board of Education academic content standards."
"The Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources (CCCOER) is a joint effort by individual community colleges, regional and statewide consortia, the Open Courseware Consortium, the American Association for Community Colleges, the League for Innovation in the Community Colleges, and many other educational partners to develop and use open educational resources, open textbooks, and open courseware to expand access to higher education and improve teaching and learning."
"Chemistry Central is an open access chemistry publisher, operated by BioMed Central and owned by Springer Science+Business Media, committed to the free and widespread dissemination of chemical research. All original research articles published by, or in co-operation with, Chemistry Central are made freely and permanently accessible online immediately upon publication. Chemistry Central levies an article-processing charge to cover the cost of the publication process and authors publishing with Chemistry Central retain the copyright to their work, licensing it under the Creative Commons Attribution License which allows articles to be re-used and re-distributed without restriction, as long as the original work is correctly cited."
"CiteSeerx is an evolving scientific literature digital library and search engine that has focused primarily on the literature in computer and information science." Indexed in IVSL.
"Connexions is a dynamic digital educational ecosystem consisting of an educational content repository and a content management system optimized for the delivery of educational content. Connexions is one of the most popular open education sites in the world. Its more than 17,000 learning objects or modules in its repository and over 1000 collections (textbooks, journal articles, etc.) are used by over 2 million people per month."
"Since 2009, the Cultures of Knowledge project, based at the University of Oxford with the generous support of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, has been using a variety of research methods to reassemble and understand" the networks of correspondences, the Republic of Letters, that flourished between 1550 and 1750.
Over 15,000 images of Persian manuscripts from the British Library's collection of manuscripts.
A list of peer-reviewed journals published using the Digital Commons institutional repository platform hosted by Bepress.
"The aim of the DOAJ is to increase the visibility and ease of use of open access scientific and scholarly journals, thereby promoting their increased usage and impact. The DOAJ aims to be comprehensive and cover all open access scientific and scholarly journals that use a quality control system to guarantee the content. In short, the DOAJ aims to be THE one stop shop for users of open access journals."
Books in the public domain organized and made accessible on the web by the University of Adelaide Library. The ebooks can be downloaded in ePub and Kindle formats.
"Eldis is an online information service providing free access to relevant, up-to-date and diverse research on international development issues. Eldis includes over 30,000 summaries and links to free full-text research and policy documents from over 8,000 publishers." Eldis is hosted by the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) and funded by IrishAid and UKaid but their service is delivered by a growing global network of organisations.
"EMES is a peer-reviewed electronic publication that seeks to bridge the gap between research and pedagogy in Middle East Studies. The editors are Camron Michael Amin at The University of Michigan-Dearborn, Benjamin C. Fortna at SOAS, The University of London and Elizabeth B. Frierson at The University of Cincinnati. The documents here are presented in the same thematic categories as the printed collection: State and Society, Gender and Society, Press, Media and Society, Religion and Society, Views of the World, Redefining Tradition and Economic Change."
"The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (ETCSL), a project of the University of Oxford, comprises a selection of nearly 400 literary compositions recorded on sources which come from ancient Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) and date to the late third and early second millennia BCE. The corpus contains Sumerian texts in transliteration, English prose translations and bibliographical information for each composition. The transliterations and the translations can be searched, browsed and read online using the tools of the website. Funding for the ETCSL project came to an end in the summer of 2006 and no work is currently being done to this site or its contents."
"The Electronic Library of Mathematics contains online journals, article collections, monographs, and other electronic resources in the field of mathematics. All material is in electronic form and access is generally free, except for some periodicals with a "moving wall", i.e., a certain delay period after which resources become freely available."
"The Energy Citations Database (ECD) provides free access to over 2,521,000 science research citations with continued growth through regular updates. There are over 330,000 full-text documents, primarily from 1943 forward, available via the database. Citations and documents are made publicly available by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)."
"Eurostat is the statistical office of the European Union situated in Luxembourg. Its task is to provide the European Union with statistics at European level that enable comparisons between countries and regions."
"The National Archives, through its National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC), has entered into a cooperative agreement with The University of Virginia Press to create this site and make freely available online the historical documents of the Founders of the United States of America."
"The Federal Reserve Archival System for Economic Research (FRASER®) started in 2004 as a data preservation and accessibility project of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. FRASER’s mission is to safeguard and provide easy access to the nation’s economic history—particularly the history of the Federal Reserve System—through digitization of documents related to the U.S. financial system. "
Free books in several programming languages as well as lists of free books in other areas of computing.
"The Global Database of Events, Language, and Tone (GDELT) is an initiative to construct a catalog of human societal-scale behavior and beliefs across all countries of the world over the last two centuries down to the city level globally, to make all of this data freely available for open research, and to provide daily updates to create the first "realtime social sciences earth observatory." Nearly a quarter-billion georeferenced events capture global behavior in more than 300 categories covering 1979 to present with daily updates."
A PBS (Public Broadcasting System) project, Global Connections "is the online home to a family of sites created to help teachers, students, and the general public learn more about events around the world through readings, lesson plans, links, timelines, and maps." It currently has sites for the Middle East and for Liberia.
"To help journalists around the world, the GIJN staff has assembled a comprehensive list of investigative journalism manuals in different languages. There are several free thematic guides, ranging from watchdog reporting to coverage of environmental issues and tracking corruption."
"Google has partnered with hundreds of museums, cultural institutions, and archives to host the world’s cultural treasures online. With a team of dedicated Googlers, [the Institute] is building tools that allow the cultural sector to display more of its diverse heritage online, making it accessible to all. Here you can find artworks, landmarks and world heritage sites, as well as digital exhibitions that tell the stories behind the archives of cultural institutions across the globe. "
[Access to licensed material is by username/password. Some materials can be accessed for free without logging in.] HINARI is one of the four public private partnerships in theResearch4Life program , which seek to help achieve the UN's Millennium Development Goals by providing the developing world with access to critical scientific research. HINARI is focused on research in health but also covers information technology, communication, psychology, political science and other disciplines relevant to the AUIS academic programs.
"Hindawi publishes 562 peer-reviewed, open access journals covering a wide range of academic disciplines. Hindawi’s journals are organized into a number of journal collections: Hindawi’s Independent Journals, International Scholarly Research Network (which is a fast-track series of journals), as well as two journal series devoted to the publication of Case Reports and Conference Papers."
The IEA produces around 70 free publications a year. "The IEA is an autonomous organisation which works to ensure reliable, affordable and clean energy for its 28 member countries and beyond. The IEA's four main areas of focus are: energy security, economic development, environmental awareness, and engagement worldwide."
A collaborative effort between two Georgetown University libraries, the Bioethics Research Library (BRL) and the School of Foreign Service Qatar Library (SFS-Q), with a grant from the Qatar National Research Fund. "Since October 2009, the project staff (working in Georgetown libraries in Qatar and Washington) have identified more than 1,500 writings on Islamic perspectives on abortion, death and dying, genetics, health care delivery, human experimentation, organ transplantation, and reproductive technologies, primarily in English and Arabic."
"The Internet Archive is a 501(c)(3) non-profit that was founded to build an Internet library. Its purposes include offering permanent access for researchers, historians, scholars, people with disabilities, and the general public to historical collections that exist in digital format. Founded in 1996 and located in San Francisco, the Archive has been receiving data donations from Alexa Internet and others. In late 1999, the organization started to grow to include more well-rounded collections. Now the Internet Archive includes texts, audio, moving images, and software as well as archived web pages in our collections, and provides specialized services for adaptive reading and information access for the blind and other persons with disabilities."
A set of open access ebooks that IOS Press offers out of the more than 100 international journals and approximately 120 book titles that it publishes each year on subjects ranging from computer sciences and mathematics to medicine and the natural sciences.
Put together by the University of California Hastings College of Law Library. "This research guide is a collection of documents, reports and resources covering the legal situation in Iraq from 2003-2012. From the beginning of the US/Coalition Forces War in Iraq, through the transitional justice period and the trial of Saddam Hussein. It also includes resources covering the history of law in Iraq, historical and current constitutions, prisoner treatment, and the basic structure of the current legal system."
"IASJ is one platform where all scholarly journals published by the Iraqi universities and research institutions are indexed and discovered. All journals in IASJ are peer-reviewed and open access." The publications included in IASJ are also searchable in the Iraqi Virtual Science Library.
[Access is by username/password. But see also JSTOR's Register & Read initiative which offers free, read-online access to individual scholars and researchers who register for a MyJSTOR account.]
JSTOR (Journal Storage) is part of ITHAKA, "a not-for-profit organization that helps the academic community use digital technologies to preserve the scholarly record and to advance research and teaching in sustainable ways." JSTOR provides full-text searches of digitized back issues of hundreds of well known journals, some going back 100 years or more. [It now also offers ebooks on the same platform but we're still considering this option.]
The Kurdish Institute holds "over 10,000 monographs about the Kurds, in 25 languages, several tens of thousands of published documents, collections of reviews and newspapers, photographs, videos, post cards and posters, as well as audio archives and music recordings."
[Access is via IP authentication. AUIS network access only.] "LexisNexis® Academic helps students and faculty members at colleges and universities save valuable research time by offering them quick, easy access to more than 15,000 of the most credible business, legal, and news sources available in a single location."
"LookLex is a Norway based media house presenting North Africa and the Middle East to a mainly western audience. This we do through 3 main channels; reference material organized into an encyclopaedia, traveller's guides to the North African countries and a basic language course in Arabic. The owner and editor of LookLex is Tore Kjeilen." LookLex was originally known as CiAS, and was established in March 1996. In 1999 the name was changed into LookLex.
The Making of America (MOA) is a project that begun in 1995, "focused on developing a collaborative effort between Cornell University and the University of Michigan. Drawing on the depth of primary materials within their respective libraries, these two institutions developed a thematically-related digital library documenting American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction. At Cornell University, 109 monographs (267 volumes) and 22 journals (955 volumes) with imprints primarily between 1840 - 1900 were selected, scanned, and made available."
ManyBooks takes public domain books from Project Gutenberg and the Internet Archive and makes them available in more user- and e-reader friendly formats.
"The Maktabat MEPI Library is a regularly updated online repository for training resources developed by civil society organizations and institutions that support civil society in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region through funding from The U.S.-Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI). Maktabat MEPI also includes additional resources created by organizations that work towards more pluralistic, participatory and prosperous societies throughout the region."
"MERLOT is a free and open online community of resources designed primarily for faculty, staff and students of higher education from around the world to share their learning materials and pedagogy. MERLOT is a leading edge, user-centered, collection of peer reviewed higher education, online learning materials, catalogued by registered members and a set of faculty development support services."
"MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) is a web-based publication of virtually all MIT course content. OCW is open and available to the world and is a permanent MIT activity."
"The MIT Video website — developed and maintained by the MIT News Office — aggregates and curates video produced by the Institute's offices, laboratories, centers and administration. This includes feature and editorial videos, event recordings, academic content and more. Each day, the editorial team at MIT Video selects one or more videos to "spotlight" based on the videos' content, production value and timeliness. We hope you enjoy MIT Video and welcome your feedback as we continue to develop the site."
List of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) - can be browsed by university/entity, type of certificate, country, initiatives and categories, instructor, language, and by tag.
A MOOC directory managed by AboutEdu. "Singular objective here is to provide a simple central directory of existing free Massive Open Online Courses available in K-12, Higher Education and Other areas for students, parents, teachers, counselors, tutors, military & their families, working adults, the unemployed, retirees, and others."
"MUSE Film and Television is a non-profit executive production company that uses film and digital media to create quality films on visual art and culture... Founded in 1992 by Karl Katz, ...former Chairman for Special Projects at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and the founder and director of the Museum’s Office of Film and Television, and The Program for Art on Film, the Museum’s joint venture with the J. Paul Getty Trust."
Musopen is a "non-profit focused on improving access and exposure to music by creating free resources and educational materials. We provide recordings, sheet music, and textbooks to the public for free, without copyright restrictions. Put simply, our mission is to set music free."
"The National Academies Press (NAP) was created by the National Academy of Sciences to publish the reports of the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and National Research Council, all operating under a charter granted by the Congress of the United States. The NAP publishes more than 200 books a year on a wide range of topics in science, engineering, and medicine, providing authoritative information on important matters in science and health policy. The institutions served by the NAP are unique in their ability to attract leading experts in many fields to join panels and committees charged with providing policy advice on some of the nation’s most pressing scientific, technical, and health-related issues."
The National Diet Library is a discovery experience focused on Japan and the Japanese people. Materials to be discovered include online exhibitions and digitized content on Japanese history and culture.
The Nature Publishing Group (NPG) "is actively expanding the open access options it offers to authors, with new open access journal launches and open access options on many subscription journals. The first of these models were introduced in 2005, with the addition of open access options on 11 journals in 2009. Further open access options on a number of journals were introduced in 2010 and 2011. Currently, over sixty journals published by NPG offer open access options or are open access and NPG published over 2000 open access articles in 2012."
The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) Bookshelf "provides free access to books and documents in life science and healthcare. A vital node in the data-rich resource network at NCBI, Bookshelf enables users to easily browse, retrieve, and read content, and spurs discovery of related information."
"The Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (ncse) is a free, online scholarly edition of six nineteenth-century periodicals and newspapers. It is a collaboration between Birkbeck, University of London, King’s College London (Centre for Computing in the Humanities and the Department of English), the British Library, and Olive Software. It was funded from January 2005 to December 2007 by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The edition is intended to be of use for anybody with an interest in nineteenth-century literature, history or culture, as well as those interested in the history of the press, or print culture more broadly."
"This collection comprises books and periodicals published in the United States during the nineteenth century, primarily during the second half of the century. Most of the materials were digitized through the Making of America project, a collaboration of Cornell University and the University of Michigan to preserve textual materials on deteriorating paper and make them accessible electronically. The materials selected illuminate the subject areas of education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science and technology. Also included are volumes of American poetry. "
"Founded in 1985 by journalists and scholars to check rising government secrecy, the National Security Archive combines a unique range of functions: investigative journalism center, research institute on international affairs, library and archive of declassified U.S. documents ("the world's largest nongovernmental collection" according to the Los Angeles Times), leading non-profit user of the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, public interest law firm defending and expanding public access to government information, global advocate of open government, and indexer and publisher of former secrets." Based at George Washington University's Gelman Library.
"OATD aims to be the best possible resource for finding open access graduate theses and dissertations published around the world. Metadata (information about the theses) comes from over 800 colleges, universities, and research institutions. OATD currently indexes over 1.6 million theses and dissertations."
An initiative of the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges (SBCTC) that provides free or low-cost materials primarily for students at Washington state's community and technical colleges but are also freely useable and shareable with any student or educator worldwide. New course materials developed for the OCL are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License.
The Open Data Foundation is a US based 501(c)(3) non-profit organization "dedicated to the adoption of global metadata standards and the development of open-source solutions promoting the use of statistical data." See its Publications.
The OER Commons is a project for and a platform for authoring and making available Open Education Resources (OER). OERs "are teaching and learning materials freely available for everyone to use, whether you are a teacher or a learner. This includes full courses, modules, syllabi, lectures, homework assignments, quizzes, lab activities, pedagogical materials, games, simulations, and many more resources contained in digital media collections from around the world."
"The OER university (OERu) makes higher education accessible to everyone. Coordinated by the OER Foundation, an independent, not-for-profit organisation, the OERu network offers free online university courses for students worldwide. The OERu partners also provide affordable ways for learners to gain academic credit towards qualifications from recognised institutions."
The current list, as of 7/2/2013, shows 111 titles of books in the humanities, made available in PDF format.
"The World Bank is the largest single source of development knowledge. The World Bank Open Knowledge Repository (OKR) is The World Bank’s official open access repository for its research outputs and knowledge products."
"The Open Learning Initiative (OLI) is a grant-funded group at Carnegie Mellon University, offering innovative online courses to anyone who wants to learn or teach. "
"The Online Books Page is a website that facilitates access to books that are freely readable over the Internet. It also aims to encourage the development of such online books, for the benefit and edification of all." The The site is hosted by the University of Pennsylvania Libraries.
The Online Library of Liberty "is where electronic versions of classic books about individual liberty are stored. These texts go back some 4,000 years and cover the disciplines of economics, history, law, literature, philosophy, political theory, religion, war and peace. They are in a variety of formats - facsimile PDFs so scholars can view the original text, HTML for ease of searching and attractive layout, and text-based PDF EBooks for personal use. The Library also contains bibliographic information about the books as well as other "metadata" about the authors and editors."
"The OpenCourseWare Consortium is a worldwide community of hundreds of higher education institutions and associated organizations committed to advancing OpenCourseWare and its impact on global education."
Open Culture's mission is to centralize free and enriching high-quality cultural and educational media for the "worldwide lifelong learning community." It reviews and curates free audio books, online courses, language lessons, ebooks and more.
"The Open Data Research network is a collaborative project, coordinated by the Web Foundation and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), that exists to: Connect open data focussed researchers from across the world;Bring together information and news relating to research into the implementation and impacts of open data initiatives; and, Host focussed research projects into open data. The network is open to all researchers interested in open data, and has a particular focus on research into open data in the global South. Between 2013 and 2015 the Open Data Research network will host the ‘Emerging Impacts of Open Data in Developing Countries (ODDC)’ project: a multi-country research and capacity building programme."
"A grassroots response to the crisis in scholarly publishing in the humanities, Open Humanities Press is an international open access publishing collective whose mission is to make leading works of contemporary critical thought freely available worldwide."
"Courses are based on open licensed courses from The Saylor Foundation and other organizations."
"Open Yale Courses (OYC) provides lectures and other materials from selected Yale College courses to the public free of charge via the Internet. The courses span the full range of liberal arts disciplines, including humanities, social sciences, and physical and biological sciences."
"OpenAIRE aims to support the implementation of Open Access in Europe. It provides the means to promote and realize the widespread adoption of the Open Access Policy, as set out by the ERC Scientific Council Guidelines for Open Access and the Open Access pilot launched by the European Commission."
"OpenGLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museum) is an initiative coordinated by the Open Knowledge Foundation promotes free and open access to digital cultural heritage held by cultural institutions."
Opening Education is a program in British Columbia (Canada) to engage faculty, institutions and publishers to implement an Open Textbook project. As of Sept. 2013, it offers 15 textbooks that have been reviewed by BC faculty. See also a few books deposited by the project with the BCOpenTextbooks.
A project of Rice University. Their goal is to provide low-cost, open source, peer-reviewed and high quality textbooks to 10 million students. See their adoption list.
[Access is via IP authentication. AUIS network access only.] A good starting point for examining the many sides of a debate on today’s hottest social issues, including terrorism, endangered species, stem cell research and gun control. Includes vocabulary, definitions and assessments to formulate arguments about and analysis of issues and concepts.
ORACC is a project designed to develop a complete corpus of richly annotated cuneiform from the ancient Near East and to make these openly available online and accessible to users. The project has subprojects directed by individual scholars specializing in relevant topic about the ancient Near East.
"The Orange Grove repository, is Florida's digital repository for instructional resources. The repository provides an environment for educators to search for, use, remix, share, and contribute educational resources."
[Access is via IP authentication. AUIS network access only.] "The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is widely regarded as the accepted authority on the English language. It is an unsurpassed guide to the meaning, history, and pronunciation of 600,000 words— past and present—from across the English-speaking world."
[Access is via IP authentication. AUIS network access only.] Encompassing over 3,500 A-Z reference entries, chapters from scholarly and introductory works, Qur'anic materials, primary sources, images, maps, and timelines, Oxford Islamic Studies Online offers a multi-layered reference experience designed to provide a first stop for anyone needing information and context on Islam.
OUP's fully open access journals include AoB Plants, Bioscience Horizons, Conservation Physiology, Database, DNA Research, Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health, Genome Biology and Evolution, Journal of Legal Analysis, and Progress of Theoretical and Experimental Physics.
The University of Oxford Text Archive hosts Arts and Humanities Data Service (AHDS) Literature, Languages and Linguistics.
With the Proquest Dissertations & Theses (PQDT) Open, you can read the full text of open access dissertations and theses free of charge.
Project Gutenberg offers over 49,000 free ebooks: choose among free epub books, free kindle books, download them or read them online.We carry high quality ebooks: All our ebooks were previously published by bona fide publishers. We digitized and diligently proofread them with the help of thousands of volunteers
"The PMC Open Access Subset some or all openaccess content is a relatively small part of the total collection of articles in PMC. Articles in the PMC Open Access Subset are still protected by copyright, but are made available under a Creative Commons or similar license that generally allows more liberal redistribution and reuse than a traditional copyrighted work."
The RAND Corporation has been producing quality research output for over 60 years. The Rand Classics are RAND books and reports that stand out as classics and are available free online in their entirety. Many other RAND publications, including more recent monographs, are also available free online.
"SAGE Open is a peer-reviewed, "Gold" open access journal from SAGE that publishes original research and review articles in an interactive, open access format. Articles may span the full spectrum of the social and behavioral sciences and the humanities."
"The Saylor Foundation (under its legal name, The Constitution Foundation) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization headquartered in Washington, D.C. The Foundation was established in 1999 by Michael J. Saylor, the Chairman and CEO of the business intelligence company MicroStrategy, Inc. and the Foundation’s sole trustee." The Foundation's free education initiative (saylor.org) offers nearly 300 free, self-paced online courses, with more on the way, as well as a media library of content covering many subject areas.
Open access to about 75 peer-reviewed journals, mostly in engineering but also in business and social sciences.
"SciTech Connect is a portal to free, publicly-available DOE-sponsored R&D results including technical reports, bibliographic citations, journal articles, conference papers, books, multimedia and data information. SciTech Connect is a consolidation of two core DOE search engines, the Information Bridge and the Energy Citations Database. SciTech Connect incorporates all of the R&D information from these two products into one search interface. SciTech Connect was developed by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) to increase access to science, technology, and engineering research information from DOE and its predecessor agencies."
[Access is through the Iraq Virtual Science Library, by username/password]. SpringerLink is Springer’s platform, which provides access to 6 million research documents.
SpringerOpen, launched in June 2010, includes Springer’s portfolio of 130+ peer-reviewed fully open access journals across all areas of science. In August 2012, due to the growing demand for open access, SpringerOpen has expanded their offering to open access books.
[Access is via IP authentication. AUIS network access only.] "Statista.com is the first statistics portal in the world to integrate data on over 60,000 topics from over 18,000 sources onto a single professional platform. Categorized into 21 market sectors, Statista.com provides companies, business customers, research institutions, and the academic community with direct access to quantitative data on media, business, finance, politics, and a wide variety of other areas of interest or markets.?
"The Open SUNY Textbook Program will produce fifteen free online textbooks in 2013, thanks to the support from a SUNY Innovative Instruction Technology Grant (IITG) and library funding, and the time and talent of librarians and consultation by SUNY Press."
"TAARII (formerly the American Association for Research in Baghdad, AARB) has been established to promote scholarly research on and in Iraq and ancient Mesopotamia. The Institute, a consortium of American universities and museums, intends to establish a multidisciplinary American scholarly research center in Iraq when conditions permit." The Institute publishes a bi-annual newsletter and also a a blog that are open for anyone to read.
Taylor & Francis have been publishing academic research since 1798 and on an open access basis since 2006. It offers several open access options for authors to make their work freely available upon publication. T & F and Routledge now publishes about 16 open access journals covering the life sciences, social sciences and engineering. Furthermore, a "selection of titles have been made available as Open Access by Taylor & Francis, in conjunction with JISC and OAPEN, as part of a pilot (the OAPEN-UK research project) to study Open Access in research monograph publishing."
Free books on computer programming, databases, operating systems, web development, network administration, etc.
"TED is a nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out in 1984 as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. Along with two annual conferences -- the TED Conference and TEDGlobal -- TED includes the award-winning TED Talks video site, the Open Translation Project and TED Conversations, the inspiring TED Fellows and TEDx programs, and the annual TED Prize."
"Textbook Revolution is a student-run site dedicated to increasing the use of free educational materials by teachers and professors."
"TextBookGo is building the largest online resource for free etextbooks for college. All of the online textbooks we provide are 100% free for you to use. All of the textbooks we provide are open source and have been approved by the publishers license and terms for free use. We do not list or distribute textbook torrents or illegal copies of copyrighted textbooks. Want to help promote the use of free etextbooks? Please submit free etextbooks to our growing database, and encourage your school and college professors to consider utilizing free etextbooks for their courses and/or programs."
Trove is a discovery experience focused on Australia and Australians. Materials to be discovered include books, photos, digitized newspapers, music, maps, diaries, letters, people and organizations and more.
A single entry point for the global user community to search and download a variety of statistical resources of the UN system. Launched by the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA).
"Provides data and trends on the "Population of concern to UNHCR": refugees, asylum-seekers, returned refugees, internally displaced persons (IDPs) protected/assisted by UNHCR, returned IDPs, stateless persons, and others of concern to UNHCR, in more than 180 countries."
"In an effort to reduce costs for students, the University of Minnesota's College of Education and Human Development has created this catalog of open textbooks to be reviewed by faculty members. Instructors can customize open textbooks to fit their course needs by remixing, editing, and adding their own content. Students can access free digital versions or purchase low-cost print copies of open textbooks."
"The Energy Resources Program is part of the USGS Energy and Minerals, and Environmental Health Mission Area that conducts research and assessments on the location, quantity, and quality of mineral and energy resources, including the economic and environmental effects of resource extraction and use; and conducts research on the environmental impacts of human activities that introduce chemical and pathogenic contaminants into the environment and threaten human, animal (fish and wildlife), and ecological health."
"The United States Institute of Peace (USIP) was established by Congress in 1984 as an independent, federally-funded national security institution devoted to the nonviolent prevention and mitigation of deadly conflict abroad."
[Access is through the Iraq Virtual Science Library, by username/password]. Web of Knowledge is a citation index covering the sciences, social sciences, and arts & humanities. Journals, books, data and conference proceedings — indexed cover-to-cover.
Wiley Open Access publishes a number of online journals across biological, chemical and health sciences. These are available on the Wiley Online Library and PubMed Central.
"Several Wiley-Blackwell journals offer free access to their backfiles on Wiley Online Library. All content prior to a given date is made free online to all. These are indicated by the free content Access Icon. "
Key statistics by country, cross-country, cross-sector thematic research output from the World Bank's research unit; and information, analyis, and advice on global trends in the world economy. Many of these resources are free from this WB site but will eventually be indexed and cataloged in the WB eLibrary which requires subscription.
Free and open access to data about development in countries around the globe.
"DataBank is an analysis and visualisation tool that contains collections of time series data on a variety of topics. You can create your own queries; generate tables, charts, and maps; and easily save, embed, and share them."
The World Factbook, published by the Central Intelligence Agency, "provides information on the history, people, government, economy, geography, communications, transportation, military, and transnational issues for 267 world entities. The Reference tab includes: maps of the major world regions, as well as Flags of the World, a Physical Map of the World, a Political Map of the World, a World Oceans map, and a Standard Time Zones of the World map."
"The World Public Library Association is the world’s largest eBook provider. Founded in 1996, the World Public Library Association is a global coordinated effort to preserve and disseminate classic works of literature, serials, bibliographies, dictionaries, encyclopedias, and other reference works in a number of languages and countries around the world."
"This archive of primary documents from World War One has been assembled by volunteers of the World War I Military History List (WWI-L). International in focus, the archive intends to present in one location primary documents concerning the Great War." The archive has been hosted by the Brigham Young University Library since 1996.
A collection in the The Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy. Contains full text of agreements and treaties during this period in history.
The WRI is a global research organization that works closely with leaders to sustain a healthy environment. WRI produces maps, charts, data sets, infographics, and other visual resources to turn “information into action.”
"We’re doing what BBC, CNN and the rest of the mainstream media can’t – disrupting the global newsflow with a unique digital media about the Middle East and North Africa."
[Access is by username/password.] An EBSCOhost research database. "Designed for academic institutions, this database provides complete coverage of multidisciplinary, full-text academic journals. The capacity of content within this resource fully supports scholarly research in the key areas of academic study by providing peer-reviewed journals, full-text periodicals, reports, books, and much more."
[Access is via IP authentication. AUIS network access only.] "An online collection of approximately 3,700 books of high quality in the humanities."
[Access to licensed material is by username/password. Please contact the library for login details.] AGORA is one of the four public-private partnerships in theResearch4Life program , which seek to help achieve the UN's Millennium Development Goals by providing the developing world with access to critical scientific research. AGORA provides access to one of the world’s largest collections of agricultural literature, offered by the leading publishers.
[Access is through the Iraq Virtual Science Library, by username/password]. "AIP Publishing's portfolio includes 17 highly cited research journals, and the Conference Proceedings series."
[Archived issues of the Notices of the ACM , the Bulletin of the ACM, and numerous mathematical research journals are available through this website ]. "The AMS, founded in 1888 to further mathematical research and scholarship, has maintained anactive publishing program for over 100 years and has established a reputation as one of the top publishers of advanced mathematics in the world."
[Access is through the Iraq Virtual Science Library, by username/password]. "Since 1932, Annual Reviews has offered comprehensive, timely collections of critical reviews written by leading scientists. Annual Reviews volumes are published each year for more than 41 focused disciplines within the Biomedical, Life, Physical, and Social Sciences including Economics."
[Access is by username/password.] ARDI is one of the four public-private partnerships in the Research4Life program , which seek to help achieve the UN's Millennium Development Goals by providing the developing world with access to critical scientific research. ARDI is a program administered by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in cooperation with its partners in the scientific and technical publishing community with the aim to increase the availability of scientific and technical information in developing countries.
[Access is by username/password, individually assigned so pls get yours from the library staff.] Ebrary Academic Complete provides full text access to more than 80,000 ebooks in 16 subject databases.
[Access to licensed material is by username/password. Some materials can be accessed for free without logging in.] HINARI is one of the four public private partnerships in the Research4Life program , which seek to help achieve the UN's Millennium Development Goals by providing the developing world with access to critical scientific research. HINARI is focused on research in health but also covers information technology, communication, psychology, political science and other disciplines relevant to the AUIS academic programs.
[Access is by username/password. But see also JSTOR's Register & Read initiativewhich offers free, read-online access to individual scholars and researchers who register for a MyJSTOR account.]
JSTOR (Journal Storage) is part of ITHAKA, "a not-for-profit organization that helps the academic community use digital technologies to preserve the scholarly record and to advance research and teaching in sustainable ways." JSTOR provides full-text searches of digitized back issues of hundreds of well known journals, some going back 100 years or more. [It now also offers ebooks on the same platform but we're still considering this option.]
[Access is via IP authentication. AUIS network access only.] "LexisNexis® Academic helps students and faculty members at colleges and universities save valuable research time by offering them quick, easy access to more than 15,000 of the most credible business, legal, and news sources available in a single location."
[Access is through the Iraq Virtual Science Library, by username/password]. SpringerLink is Springer’s platform, which provides access to 6 million research documents.
[Access is through the Iraq Virtual Science Library, by username/password]. Web of Knowledge is a citation index covering the sciences, social sciences, and arts & humanities. Journals, books, data and conference proceedings — indexed cover-to-cover.