New and Noteworthy is the City Tech Library OER Team’s bi-weekly roundup of new and noteworthy OER. We try to include at least one OER relevant to each school at City Tech in every post. At the end of the month, these resources will be compiled and distributed by the library liaison for your department. Please contact us if you know of new or particularly interesting OER to share with our colleagues or would like more information about OER initiatives at City Tech. 

Arts & Sciences 

  1. Oral Literature in Africa, by Ruth Finnegan, The Open University (2017). License: CC BY
    “This revised edition [of Ruth Finnegan’s Oral Literature in Africa] makes Finnegan’s ground-breaking research available to the next generation of scholars. It includes a new introduction, additional images and an updated bibliography, as well as its original chapters on poetry, prose, “drum language” and drama, and an overview of the social, linguistic and historical background of oral literature in Africa.”
  1. Human Behavior and the Social Environment II, by Whitney Payne, University of Arkansas (2021). License: CC BY-NC-SA
    “These materials will help students and instructors alike explore human behavior and how it is shaped and impacted by both traditional and non-traditional paradigms. This text will also support the reader in having a deeper understanding of how the environment, in all of its complexity, can affect individuals, families, groups, and communities.”

Professional Studies

  1. The Asynchronous Cookbook: recipes for engaged & active online learning, by Middlebury College Office of Digital Learning & Inquiry, Middlebury College (2021). License: CC BY-NC-SA
    “Whether you’re teaching mostly in person but looking for some regular, asynchronous activities to add to your course, or teaching a fully online course, this resource is for you. The activities in this cookbook draw on research and good practice in online course design to provide recipes – concise and specific instructions and examples – for adding asynchronous activities to a course. Meaningful interaction between students and instructors is a key ingredient in all of these recipes.”

  2. Public Health in Pharmacy Practice: A Casebook – 2nd Edition, by Jordan R Covvey, Vibhuti Arya, and Natalie A. DiPietro Mager, Milne Open Textbooks (2021). License: CC BY
    “This casebook, now in its second edition, is a collaboration of over 90 individuals with expertise and training in public health pharmacy. A total of 54 chapters are presented, covering a broad array of topics relevant to pharmacy applications of public health. These topics include, but are not limited to, cross-cultural care, health literacy and disparities, infectious disease, health promotion and disease prevention, medication safety, structural racism, advocacy/policy analysis, chronic disease, women’s health, rural health, travel medicine and more.”

Technology & Design

  1. Construction Technology 101, by Bruce Frost, Alpena Community College (2013). License: CC BY
    “This course is a comprehensive study of the principles of Construction Technology. It applies the concepts of modern carpentry, engineering and technology, utilizing the framework of green and sustainability to residential and commercial construction. This is an introductory course intending to define and apply basic principles of building and how to incorporate high efficiency, high performance, sustainability, recycling and environmental stewardship into each stage. Specifically, this course will cover topics such as plans, specifications and codes, building layout, footings and framing, roofing and insulation, all focusing on the most efficient and sustainable processes identified through best practices in the industry.”

  2. Future Energy: Opportunities & Challenges, by Thomas W. Kerlin, The University of Tennessee (2013, 2021). License: CC BY
    “How can we produce enough sustainable energy while avoiding unacceptable environmental consequences? To evaluate the various energy options, we must understand the science of each potential energy source and energy use technology. Future Energy: Opportunities & Challenges was originally published in 2013 by the International Society of Automation. Rights for this work have been reverted to the authors by the original publisher. The author has chosen to license this work with a Creative Commons license.”
  1. Intermediate Fluid Mechanics, by James Liburdy, Oregon State University (2021). License:  CC BY-NC-SA
    “This book is meant to be a second course in fluid mechanics that stresses applications dealing with external potential flows and intermediate viscous flows. Students are expected to have some background in some of the fundamental concepts of the definition of a fluid, hydrostatics, use of control volume conservation principles, initial exposure to the Navier-Stokes equations, and some elements of flow kinematics, such as streamlines and vorticity.” 


Cailean Cooney, Assistant Professor, OER Librarian: ccooney@citytech.cuny.edu
Rena Grossman, Adjunct OER Librarian: rgrossman@citytech.cuny.edu
Joshua Peach, Adjunct Reference & OER Librarian: jpeach@citytech.cuny.edu
Joanna Thompson, Adjunct OER Librarian: jthompson@citytech.cuny.edu