Affordable Learning Materials
There are many strategies you can use to make your course more affordable, from adopting Open Educational Resources (OER), to utilizing textbooks available through the library and embedding streamed content from our film databases directly in your Canvas course shell. This page will walk you through some of these cost-saving strategies and give you tips and examples to help you get started.
Don’t forget, if you’re ever unsure how to reduce course costs, your subject librarian is here to help
Free-to-Use Course Materials
Use Library Resources Accordion Closed
- Search the Quick Search for e-book titles from our collections; many allow for multiple simultaneous users so that a whole class can have unlimited access. Contact your Subject Librarian for help
- Link to articles available through our subscriptions. Search the Quick Search or the library’s many databases for articles to use instead of a standard textbook.
- Link to videos from one of our streaming resources
- Search Special Collections and Archives for historic material to freely use in your course.
Adopt an E-book Accordion Closed
The University Library assigns liaison librarians to all departments on campus to provide support for teaching, learning, and research. Ask a subject specialist librarian to help you find and/or purchase an ebook with an “unlimited use” license or other digital resources for your students.
Course Reserves
Digitize portions of Media for Canvas Accordion Closed
Cline Library supports streaming video files for use in current NAU courses. Enrolled students can access material via a Kaltura link placed in your Canvas shell.
Requirements:
- The item requested to be streamed is to be used within an NAU course
- The requested clip is no greater than 10% of a work.
- The streamed media clip will reside in NAU Kaltura
- Access to streaming clips will become unavailable at the end of the current semester.
- Instructors must request streaming items for each semester, specifying courses to be authorized
Getting Started:
Please fill out this form to make a request. Please allow a one week processing time. For questions contact Course.Reserves@nau.edu
Digitize Portions of Books Accordion Closed
Ask the library to digitize and upload portions of your textbook to your Canvas course within Fair Use guidelines. It is generally permissible to digitize up to 10% of a textbook and make it freely accessible to your students, but when in doubt, you can always ask a librarian. You could also have existing library materials scanned and placed in your Canvas course as well. Fill out this form to get started.
Bring a Copy of Your Textbook/Required Text Accordion Closed
If your course requires that students purchase textbooks, especially expensive ones, it’s always a good idea to make sure a copy of those textbooks is available for short-term loan at the library. This ensures that all students have a way to access required course materials regardless of their financial situation. Visit our course materials page to learn how to place items on hold for students to check out.
Open Educational Resources
What is OER? Accordion Closed
Browse our OER Guide
Open Educational Resources are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions.
Check out our Open Educational Resources Guide.
Consult your Subject Librarian
For questions on getting started using or creating OER, contact your subject specialist librarian.
Adopt, Adapt or Create your own OER Accordion Closed
Let us help you get started!
Add Library Content into Canvas
Linking to Articles Accordion Closed
If you’re using library materials in your research, classroom or Canvas, we want to make sure your usage is included in our statistics. This usage is important for us to know as we make collection decisions.
Permalink?
A permalink is a web address that will consistently point to specific information source such as an ebook, an article, a record in the catalog, a video, or a database.
Why Use Permalinks?
- We strongly recommend using permalinks instead of uploading articles, ebooks, etc. to Canvas or file sharing because permalinks ensure that you are not in violation of copyright law.
- Permalinks allow the library to maintain accurate usage statistics, which ensures that we continue to purchase and renew the resources you need.
- Permalinks are a reliable means of sharing search results, and specific resources such as articles and ebooks. Copying and pasting the URL from the address field may not take you back to that original page. Permalinks ensure that the link will take you where you want to go.
Finding the Permalink
Different databases will have different ways of creating persistent or permalinks. Look for terms such as permalink, stable link, static url, etc. Below are instructions to link to some of our more common databases.
- Ebsco: After you run a search in the database, click on the title of the article to which you want to create a persistent link. Then select the “permalink” icon from the right side toolbar.
- JSTOR: In JSTOR, persistent links are called stable links. Click on the title of the article. Copy the STABLE URL at the bottom.
- Nexis Uni: Click on the title of the article you want to link. Select “Actions” then link to this page.
- Proquest: In Proquest, permalinks are called “document urls.” Locate the article then click on on the Abstract/Details tab. Scroll down to the document url field.
If you need more help, contact your subject librarian.
Ebooks Accordion Closed
Search for the title using Quick Search. Click on the title of the text then scroll down to “View It.” Depending on the option available, follow the directions below to link directly to the e-book.
Ebscohost Ebooks
- Click on the link for Ebscohost Ebooks Comprehensive located under “View It”
- To create a link to the whole book, click on “Permalink” from the top tool bar
- To create a link to a specific chapter, first select the chapter from the left menu, then click on “Permalink” from the top tool bar
Proquest Ebook Central
- Click on the link for Ebook Central located under “View It”
- To create a link to the whole book, click on “Share Link to Book” located under the books picture
- To create a link to a specific chapter, first select the chapter from the left menu, then click on the link icon from the top tool bar
Elsevier ScienceDirect Ebooks
- Click on the link for Elsevier ScienceDirect Books located under “View It”
- To create a link to the whole book, copy the url in the browser’s address bar
- To create a link to a specific chapter, first select the chapter then copy the url from the browser’s address bar
- Add the NAU proxy to the front of the url. https://libproxy.nau.edu/login?url=
Link to Library Film/Media Databases Accordion Closed
- Visit our Streaming Media guide which covers everything you need to know about effectively finding and using streaming video and DVD movies for classroom and events at NAU.