Research Portal: Library Resources & COVID-19: Home

Library Services for Academic Year 2021-2022

Library Materials, Research Help, and Workshop Information for Spring 2022
This document provides guidance for faculty on incorporating library collections and research services into course delivery.

Open Access and Freely Available Resources

Berghahn Open Access Books Berghahn is offering access to over 40 titles during the COVID-19 crisis. Subjects include: Anthropology, Environmental Studies, Film Studies, History, Peace and Conflict Studies, Refugee and Migration Studies, and Sociology.
BioMed Central Part of Springer Nature, BioMed Central (BMC) publishes open access journals in science and medicine.
Digital Public Library - Resources for Teachers, Students, and Genealogists DPLA offers free access to photographs, books, maps, news footage, oral histories, personal letters, museum objects, artwork, government documents, and so much more.
Directory of Open Access Books
Over 43,000 academic, peer-reviewed books from hundreds of publishers.
Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) Directory of open access peer-reviewed journals
epubBooks Free public ebooks that are downloadable in ePub and Kindle formats
Google Books Google Books is a service that searches the full text of scanned books. Books in the public domain may be downloaded for free.
Internet Archive: EBooks and Texts The Internet Archive: EBooks and Texts offers freely downloadable ebooks covering a wide range of subjects.
Lever Press Lever Press is an open access publisher, supported by Ursinus College, that publishes peer-reviewed academic open access books that can be freely used.
Mason OER Metafinder (MOM) The Mason OER Metafinder (MOM) searches simultaneously across 21 databases to find open educational resources (OER).
NCBI Bookshelf Search here for free online access to ebooks and documents in life sciences and healthcare.
OAPEN Library The Online Access Publishing in European Networks (OAPEN) Library contains freely accessible academic ebooks, mostly in humanities and social sciences.
OER Commons OER Commons is a public digital library of open educational resources.
Open Access in Depth Open Access in Depth is a Libguide that includes links to open access resources, projects and repositories.
Open Book Publishers This website from the UK offers freely downloadable ebooks in the humanities and social sciences.
Open Stax Open Stax is a non-profit educational initiative from Rice University that offers peer-reviewed, openly licensed, free etextbooks.
Open Textbook Library The Open Textbook Library contains textbooks that can be freely used.
PLOS (Public Library of Science) PLOS publishes open access journals in science and medicine.
Project Gutenberg Project Gutenberg is a library of over 60,000 free ebooks covering many subjects including history and literature, and in multiple languages.
Project Muse - Open Access Project Muse - offers open access academic ebooks that can be freely used.
Teaching Commons The Teaching Commons showcases high-quality open educational resources from leading colleges and universities and makes them available to educators and students around the world. Curated by librarians and their institutions and hosted by bepress, the Teaching Commons includes open-access textbooks, course materials, lesson plans, multimedia and lectures.

Learning Science Online

The following is a crowd-sourced list of free/temporarily free online simulations, virtual labs, datasets, and other resources to help lab-based courses operate remotely:

Online Resources for Science Laboratories

Some resources of particular interest to Ursinus are shared below:

JoVE This link opens in a new window
JoVE provides video articles that pair written protocols with videos demonstrating novel experimental techniques or fundamental research methods. Our subscription provides access to 4 sections of JoVE:
• Biology journal section
• Neuroscience journal section
• Basic Biology science education
• Advanced Biology science education

MERLOT Virtual Labs
A collection of virtual labs in different disciplines collated by California State University. Current subjects include Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Earth/Environmental Science, Engineering, and Math.
PhET Interactive Simulations
Science simulations in Physics, Biology, Chemistry, Earth science, and Math developed for free by the University of Colorado at Boulder

ChemCollective
A free collection of tutorials, simulations and virtual labs especially good for General Chemistry I and II.
Learn.Genetics
A free collection of genetics resources from the University of Utah. Includes quick tutorials and some virtual labs.
McGraw-Hill Biology Virtual Labs
Introductory biology lab exercises created by McGraw-Hill Education.

Teaching Lab Science Courses Online [e-book] by Linda Jeschofnig; Peter Jeschofnig
ISBN: 9781118009994
Publication Date: 2011
Teaching Lab Science Courses Online is a practical resource for educators developing and teaching fully online lab science courses.
Teaching Science Online [e-book] by Dietmar Kennepohl (Editor)
ISBN: 9781620361894
Publication Date: 2016
This book presents the guidance of expert science educators from the US and around the globe on teaching science online. They describe key concepts, delivery modes and emerging technologies, and offer models of practice.

Government Information

Federal and regional information on COVID-19

News and Information on the Pandemic

CDC Coronavirus page
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) provide authoritative U.S. federal information on the pandemic as well as official guidelines for the public and health practitioners.
Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) - COVID 19 Resource Center
CIDRAP provides news, links to articles in the scholarly and popular press, and other resources related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Coronavirus Research Database (via ProQuest) This link opens in a new window
Including coverage of the COVID-19 outbreak, this database curates openly available content related to coronaviruses. It includes thousands of open-access articles from the world’s leading publishers as well as current research from pre-print repositories such as arXiv and will continue to grow and evolve as more is learned about the pandemic.

Johns Hopkins University - Coronavirus Resource Center
Johns Hopkins is providing a wealth of information about COVID-19, including an interactive map that leverages GIS to show worldwide cases of COVID-19 in near real-time.
New York Times - Coronavirus Coverage
The New York Times is providing free access to articles about the COVID-19 outbreak. Some articles may require a free NYTimes.com account to read the full text.
University of Washington - Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation - COVID-19 Projections
This widely-cited dashboard of projections tracks health care resource utilization and cumulative/daily mortality due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
World Health Organization Coronavirus page
The WHO provides authoritative guidance on the COVID-19 pandemic from a global perspective.

AIP Publishing - Coronavirus Research Articles
A collection of research articles related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
American Association for the Advancement of Science - Coronavirus Research
The Science journals of the American Association for the Advancement of Science are providing free Coronavirus research, commentary, and news.
American Psychological Association (APA) - COVID-19 Resources
A collection of resources about COVID-19 from the American Psychological Association (APA).
American Psychological Association (APA) - Free COVID-19 articles from APA journals
A collection of free research articles about COVID-19 found in American Psychological Association (APA) journals.
Brill COVID-19 Collection
A collection of e-books and articles on topics such as public health, distance learning, and crisis research during the coronavirus outbreak.
Cambridge University Press - Coronavirus Free Access Collection
A selection of free articles and book chapters related to the 2019 novel coronavirus.
Elsevier's Novel Coronavirus Resource Directory
Elsevier's hub of free COVID-19 related information, articles, and research for researchers, educators, students, and others.
IOP Publishing - Coronavirus Articles free to access content
A collection of research articles about the coronavirus that are also found in PubMed Central.
JAMA Network - Collection of Coronavirus research articles
A collection of research articles about the coronavirus, plus other resources about the COVID-19 pandemic.
Royal Society Publishing - Open access to coronavirus research
The Royal Society Publishing's journals are making all research findings and data relevant to the covid-19 pandemic immediately open access.
Springer Nature - Coronavirus Resources
A collection of research articles about the coronavirus from Springer Nature.
Taylor & Francis – COVID-19: Novel Coronavirus Content Free to Access
This site provides links and references to relevant COVID-19 research articles, book chapters and information that can be freely accessed on Taylor & Francis Online and Taylor & Francis Ebooks in support of the global efforts in diagnosis, treatment, prevention and further research into COVID-19.

Copyright and Fair Use Information

A group of library copyright experts from around the country have drafted the following guidance regarding copyright and fair use during the national COVID-19 emergency:

Public Statement of Library Copyright Specialists: Fair Use & Emergency Remote Teaching & Research

Resources on Copyright & Emergency Remote Teaching & Research Copyright and Remote Teaching resources gathered from library copyright experts.

Library Resources & COVID-19

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