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. 

African American Studies

1. The Bright Continent: African Art History, by Kathy Curnow, Cleveland State University (2018). License: CC BY-NC-SA
   “This book aims to act as your map through the world of African art. As such, it will help you define the competencies you need to develop–visual analysis, research, noting what information is critical, asking questions, and writing down your observations–and provide opportunities for you to practice these skills until you are proficient. It will also expose you to new art forms and the worlds that produced them, enriching your understanding and appreciation.”
   
   
2. The Foundations of Hip-Hop Encyclopedia, by Anthony Kwame Harrison, Craig E. Arthur (eds.), Virginia Tech Publishing (2020). License: CC BY-NC-SA
   “The Foundations of Hip-Hop Encyclopedia is a general reference work for students, scholars, and virtually anyone interested in Hip-Hop’s formative years. In thirty-six entries, it covers the key developments, practices, personalities, and products that mark the history of Hip-Hop from the 1970s through the early ‘90s. All entries are written by students at Virginia Tech who enthusiastically enrolled in a course on Hip-Hop taught by Dr. Anthony Kwame Harrison, author of Hip Hop Underground, and co-taught by Craig E. Arthur.”

3. Slavery to Liberation: The African American Experience, by Joshua Farrington, Norman W. Powell, and Gwendolyn Graham, Encompass Digital Archive (2019). License: CC BY
   “Slavery to Liberation: The African American Experience gives instructors, students, and general readers a comprehensive and up-to-date account of African Americans’ cultural and political history, economic development, artistic expressiveness, and religious and philosophical worldviews in a critical framework.”
   

Chemistry & Environmental Science

1. Analytical Chemistry 2.1, by David T. Harvey (2016). License: CC BY-NC-SA
   “The introductory course in analytical chemistry is the ideal place in the undergraduate chemistry curriculum for exploring topics such as experimental design, sampling, calibration strategies, standardization, optimization, statistics, and the validation of experimental results. Analytical methods come and go, but best practices for designing and validating analytical methods are universal.”
   
   
2. Climate Lessons: Environmental, Social, Local, by Marja Bakermans, Worcester Polytechnic Institute (2021).
   “This course attempts to bring together knowledge of the science of ecological and climate systems and their changing status with knowledge of the social and communal structures within which these systems are embedded and through which they have been influenced.”
   
   
3. The Environmental Politics and Policy of Western Public Lands, by Erika Allen Wolters and Brent S. Steel, Oregon State University (2020). License: CC BY-NC
   “In this volume, Erika Allen Wolters and Brent Steel have brought together the experts who can explain the evolution of public lands policies and politics in all their complexities. While their subject is complex, their prose is clear, and while their subject is torn by some of the most viciously self-interested, deceitful arguments in politics today, their prose is calm, factual, and evenhanded.”

Physics

1. Astronomy, by Andrew Fraknoi, David Morrison, and Sidney C. Wolff, OpenStax CNX (2016). License: CC BY
   “Astronomy is designed to meet the scope and sequence requirements of one- or two-semester introductory astronomy courses. The book begins with relevant scientific fundamentals and progresses through an exploration of the solar system, stars, galaxies and cosmology. The Astronomy textbook builds student understanding through the use of relevant analogies, clear and non-technical explanations, and rich illustrations.”
   
   
2. University Physics Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3, by Jeff Sanny and Samuel Ling, OpenStax (2016). License: CC BY
   “University Physics is a three-volume collection that meets the scope and sequence requirements for two- and three-semester calculus-based physics courses. Volume 1 covers mechanics, sound, oscillations, and waves. Volume 2 covers thermodynamics, electricity and magnetism, and Volume 3 covers optics and modern physics. This textbook emphasizes connections between between theory and application, making physics concepts interesting and accessible to students while maintaining the mathematical rigor inherent in the subject.”
   
   
3. Variational Principles in Classical Mechanics – Revised Second Edition, by Douglas Cline, University of Rochester River Campus Libraries (2019). License: CC BY-NC-SA
   “This book introduces variational principles and their application to classical mechanics. The relative merits of the intuitive Newtonian vectorial formulation, and the more powerful variational formulations are compared. Applications to a wide variety of topics illustrate the intellectual beauty, remarkable power, and broad scope provided by use of variational principles in physics.”
   

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