DIGITAL READING ROOM: GUIDELINES FOR USE
Athabasca University Library
December 2012
Purpose:
The purpose of the Digital Reading Room (DRR) is to provide electronic reserves to students. It promotes the use of electronic resources from the Library’s digital subscriptions and other open access and freely available content in courses at both the undergraduate and graduate level. The DRRs stakeholders are first and foremost students, but also include faculty and staff from AU Faculties, Centres and Departments.
The DRR for any course is considered a component of that course and is therefore subject to the regular Athabasca University policies and processes for course development. In particular, approval for a course DRR will follow the regular course development procedures for new and revised courses. If you are unsure of these procedures, contact your faculty for assistance.
These guidelines outline the processes that should be followed when creating Digital
Reading Files (DRFs) for courses.
Guideline 1
Complete citations for all items housed in the DRR are necessary. This assists students and staff in locating the item in question, should a document move or a link break.
Guideline 2
Materials housed in the DRR are to be in digital form. This includes journal articles and ebooks from AU Library subscription resources and materials available on the Internet. It may also include audiovisual materials from AU Library subscribed databases or external stable sources.
Guideline 3
If at all possible, teach students how to find supplementary materials themselves rather than providing direct links to these items. You may choose to take a balanced approach by showing students how to find materials on their own through the inclusion of tutorials in your course, but also provide links to some supplementary materials.
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Guideline 4
Required materials that are not available from AU Library subscribed collections may require copyright clearance. Note that DRRs that contain items for which copyright clearance has been obtained may require password protection and will only be accessible to staff and students registered in the course. To avoid this, these items can be placed directly in the learning management system instead of the DRR.
Guideline 5
Whenever possible, capture the persistent links for items to be included in the DRR. For assistance finding persistent links in various databases, view this tutorial . Members of the
Library staff are available to answer questions about persistent links if necessary. If the items are e-books or journal articles, the persistent links must be taken from AU Library’s collections.
Guideline 6
You may wish to consider writing brief annotations for items in your course DRR to help students understand the purpose for which each item has been selected. Writing clear annotations will help you, as course author, to state or clarify the merits of any particular resource that students are required to read. When annotating supplementary resources, the information provided should help students decide, on the basis of relevance and usefulness, whether to take the time to pursue a particular resource.
Procedures
The procedures for developing DRRs vary slightly depending on the faculty in which you work. The steps provided below are general and outline the basic process. Questions about the process in specific faculties should be directed to the individuals listed below.
Courses Supported by the Centre for Learning Design and Development:
1) A DRR course shell is created by the Library.
2) Editors populate the course shell with resources.
3) DRRs are signed off by the course author or coordinator.
4) DRRs are linked to courses by a Multimedia Web Specialist and course team members are notified once it has been done.
5) Once content has been approved and the DRR has been linked to within the course,
DRRs are indexed and no further changes permitted.
Undergraduate Courses in the Faculty of Business:
1) A DRR course shell is created by the course editor.
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2) Editors populate the course shell with resources.
3) DRRs are signed off by the editor and the course author or coordinator, and the
Copyright Office.
4) DRRs are linked to courses by the course editor and course team members are notified once it has been done.
5) Once content has been approved and the DRR has been linked to within the course the DRRs are indexed.
Graduate Courses in the Faculty of Business:
1) A DRR course shell is created by the Library.
2) Editors (Course Production Coordinators) and/or Copyright and Course
Administrators populate the course shell with resources.
3) DRRs are signed off by the Course Production Coordinator and academic coordinator (core faculty member) overseeing the course.
4) DRRs are linked to courses by Course Production Coordinators (directly within a course application), as per the course production processes established for the course development/production team.
5) Once content has been approved and the DRR has been linked to within the course,
DRRs are indexed by the Library. Contact the Course Production Coordinator if further changes are necessary.
Broken links:
Broken links are addressed in a variety of ways. If broken links are discovered in an open course DRR you can use the “Report a Broken Link” button found in the left navigation menu in the DRR. This will direct the question to the appropriate department so that the link can be fixed. When the Library Information Desk is notified of a broken link Library staff will search for a replacement link if one has not been provided, and will update the link. If a suitable replacement link cannot be found, Library staff will notify the course coordinator or Course Production Coordinator to determine the best course of action.
Contacts:
Questions about the DRR can be addressed to the following individuals/departments:
Library Services: library@athabascau.ca
or 1-800-788-9041, ext. 6254
Faculty of Business, Graduate Programs: Maureen Hutchison - Manager, Learning Services;
Email: maureenh@athabascau.ca
or phone 1-800-561-4650, ext. 7537
Faculty of Business, Undergraduate Programs: Darlene Day – Course Production manager,
Undergraduate; Email: darlened@athabascau.ca
or phone 1-780-675-6309
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Centre for Learning Design and Development: John Ollerenshaw – Managing Editor, CLDD;
Email: johno@athabascau.ca
or phone 1-780-675-6901
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