As our country is battling the Coronavirus and Leiden University has decided to move courses online for the remainder of the curriculum, libraries, publishers and course platforms are there to give access to the resources you need.
Course Reserve Shelves and Study Room Materials
At the moment the we are working hard on a solution for the books on the physical course reserve shelves. Reading room books are already available for lending. For more information see Coronavirus: limited library services.
Free available sources
A big number of publishers have stepped forward by making videos, ebooks and other courseware available for free or temporarily upgrading the maximum number of concurrent users. On this page we will give an overview of the possibilities.
Overview
| Name | Available | Description/URL |
|---|---|---|
| Cambridge University Press (CUP) | Currently scaling up to meet demand. Should be available until the end of May | Free access to the html version of all 700 textbooks in the Cambridge Core collection. This is an extensive collection containing textbooks for almost all disciplines, be it language, computer science or mathematics. |
| Elsevier ScienceDirect | Until May 25 | All textbooks on ScienceDirect are now free to access for all institutions subscribing to ScienceDirect. If you login through the University Libraries, you will have access to the textbooks. Elsevier focuses mainly on health, science, mathematics and law. |
| Gale | Gale has opened up a collection of 9 ebooks on how to transition from physical to online education. | |
| De Gruyter | Expected to be available end of next week | De Gruyter will be opening up a large part of its own print titles and of titles from partnering presses on the De Gruyter platform. This is still a work in progress. |
| JOVE | Leiden has requested access Until June 15 | JoVE is offering all educational videos for free on its platform. The JoVE Core collection helps students get to grip with and visualize key concepts in biology and social psychology. The JoVE Science Education is a collection of video demonstrations from 8 different disciplines, such as chemistry and physics, that may be used as surrogate for lab experiments. The Lab Manual is a set of videos of labarotary techniques for introductory biology courses. |
| Kahoot | Until end of semester | Kahoot is a tool for quizzing students in online learning. For affected universities the full version of Kahoot is free until the end of the semester. Educators may request an account directly at Kahoot. |
| Kanopy | Until april 12 | Kanopy is a platform hosting documentaries, training films, Indie films and the Great Courses series. Until April 12 Kanopy has opened up all great courses, including any course materials and some additional documentaries on top of the subscription Leiden University is entitled to. Logging on with your university account is necessary. |
| Lumen Learning | Until end of semester | Lumen host online courses that may replace textbooks. They are so called Open Education Resources, which are paid for by the teaching materials that can be easily integrated into LMS-systems such as BrightSpace and Blackboard. For now these materials are also free to use until the end of the semester. Lumen offers a wide range of subjects on different levels, mainly the level of colleges and universities in the US. One of their best known partners is Carnegie Mellon University. |
| Ohio State University Press | For the duration of the COVID-19 crisis | Free access to all monographs and the linguistic textbook Language Files. |
| Oxford University Press | Resources for students and teachers are free to use, even if the lesson method is not currently being used in your programme. OUP also offers some online courses on creating bleded learning through Epigeum. The publisher mentions the use of ebooks through RedShelf or VitalSource, however this is for US universities only. | |
| Project Muse | Dates vary by publisher, mostly end of May or end of June | Over 20 publishers offering their ebooks and journals on Project Muse have decided to make their contents freely available to support teaching and research during this crisis. These materials are marked with a distinctive free icon. Amongst the publishers are: Johns Hopkins University Press (all books and journals), Ohio State University Press (all books and journals), University of Nebraska Press (all books and journals), University of North Carolina Press (all books), Temple University Press (all books), and Vanderbilt University Press (selected books). |
| Wiley | Until end of semester | Wiley offers free access to its online educational resources Wiley PLUS, Knewton Alta and ZY Books. To get access, teachers have to fill out a form for their specific class. The courses are mainly focused at Science, Technology, Maths and Engineering disciplines. |
VitalSource and Redshelf
On US websites you will find many references to free textbooks available on the platforms VitalSource or Redshelf. However, content at these platforms is mostly available to US institutions only if they have campus wide licenses.
Remote access
Most of the digital collections of Leiden University Libraries are available outside of the campus. We do recommend you only use the login for content not available as Open Access, to improve performance. To get remote access to our library resources, you can use any of the following methods:
- Access the resource via the Catalogue.
- Install the Leiden Search Assistant plugin for Chrome or Firefox to get direct access (see front page of catalogue)
- Use our Bookmarklet for other browsers.
- Set Leiden University as linking library in Google Scholar.
Library services
Of course Leiden University Libraries is doing all it can to provide satisfying services to education. Systems such as the EZProxy login and the video platform Kaltura are scaled up to meet demands. However, if you do run into problems while accessing one of our databaseso r if you need digital access to content please contact us via Ask a Librarian.
https://www.library.universiteitleiden.nl/students/free-digital-resources-during-coronavirus
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