Let’s Get Digital: U of MN Digital Course Packs

Danika Stegeman and Shane Nackerud, both of the University of Minnesota –Twin Cities Libraries, presented an ARLD Day session on a pilot project at the U of MN that supports the use of digital course packs. You probably remember non-digital course packs from your own educational experience – those shrink-wrapped piles of photocopies with a surprising number of digits on the price tag. The U of MN’s project aims to reduce those prices for students, streamline the creation process for faculty, and integrate library materials into the classroom. The pilot project reflects a partnership between organizations across the U of MN campus, including the Libraries, the College of Education and Human Development, the Copyright Permissions Center, the Bookstore, and the Office of Information Technology. Faculty members begin by selecting the course readings and other materials for their class. These may include journal articles, book chapters, web sites, videos, and more. Staff from the Libraries set up permalinks to that content which is available in library resources, wherever possible. For anything not available in library databases, the faculty member decides whether they can claim fair use under copyright law. If they can’t, rights are secured via the Copyright Center. Students access all of the content in their digital course pack via an online system built using the open source product Reserves Direct, which is embeddable within Moodle. Students have immediate online access to everything their professor has selected. If copyrighted material has been used, and if student purchase is required, the Bookstore handles the transaction. Digital course packs offer cost savings for students – even just in saving the $.03 per page cost for printed materials. They also offer faculty the opportunity to claim fair use of copyrighted material (and libraries to educate faculty about fair use). They make course content accessible online to match students’ evolving mobile needs. They make good use of purchased library material. All good reasons why the U of MN Libraries say “Let’s Get Digital.”