We’ve Added 2,000 More Ebooks Thanks to a New Open Access Project
Posted February 25, 2022 in General Collections News, JMU Libraries News, Open Education News
Explore over 2,000 ebooks from MIT Press: We are pleased to announce that the JMU community now has access to over 2,000 ebooks from Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s MIT Press. JMU Libraries also helped facilitate opening the Spring 2022 title list to be open access! These ebooks are from across the arts, social sciences, humanities and sciences. They range from recent scholarly books to classic academic works.
You can find these ebooks in JMU’s Library Search by adding the phrase “MIT Press” to your search terms — or by browsing one of these lists:
The project is a worldwide collaboration for open access led by MIT: To bring this incredible collection of ebooks to you, JMU Libraries joined with over 160 libraries worldwide to support an innovative, sustainable framework for open access books from MIT Press. This Direct to Open (D2O) project facilitates a collaborative, library-supported, and open access approach to publishing professional and scholarly books.
Our participation is mutually beneficial: “Since we are a participating member in D2O, not only has JMU helped to open the Spring 2022 content to the world, we also have new access to the back list from MIT Press,” said Yasmeen Shorish, JMU Libraries’ Head of Scholarly Communications Strategies.
Open access helps authors reach readers. “As an academic author, I don’t write for royalties as much as for impact,” said Georg F. Striedter, Professor, Neurobiology and Behavior, University of California, Irvine and MIT Press author. “The goal is to be of use to as many readers as possible—across the world, rich or poor. Therefore I am thrilled that the MIT Press and a consortium of libraries… are making it possible for the electronic version of my forthcoming book to be open access. I believe this is the future of academic book publishing, or at least its bleeding edge.”
The MIT Press is one of the largest and most distinguished university presses in the world. Amy Brand, director and publisher of the MIT Press, emphasized the Press’s commitment to publishing its 2022 list open access. “In partnership with the D2O member libraries, we are proud to create a sustainable path for open access scholarship,” noted Brand. “We are thrilled to make the Press’s spring 2022 monograph list openly available and we look forward to working with the wider academic community to fully fund the model and open our Fall 2022 list as well.”
Learn more: See MIT’s Direct to Open announcement or contact your liaison librarian.