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Research Guides

Online Teaching: Library Resources

What's in this guide:

<b>Online Course Reserves</b>

The UM Libraries can also link to online materials for you in your BlackBoard course.  Search course reserves through Blackboard (look for uReserve link in each class) and get seamless remote access to library resources for your assignments and projects. Our Course Reserves staff will locate the requested materials for you, and create a link called uReserves, in your BlackBoard courses.  uReserves will be available on the menu on the left-hand side on your Blackboard course, and available to your students to view.

<b>Teaching Visual or Data Literacy</b>

If your class has a visual or data component, it is necessary for your students to locate, cite, and use data and infographics effectively. The Digital Scholarship department also provides support for Geographic Information Systems teaching, learning, and research. Contact your subject librarian, medical librarian, or data services librarian for an introductory session on how to locate statistics and infographics online, such as our Statista database, or governmental statistical resources.

<b>Accessing information online</b>

Research Resources:  Access the library catalog, databases, e-journals, e-books, streaming audio & video resources, digital collections, and more from the library website (including Hathi Trust).  Connect students with specific articles or cases from News and Newspaper Content, or locate relevant databases according to your subject.
 
Research Guides: Curated by UM librarians and experts-in-training, Research Guides point you to library materials and resources appropriate for particular disciplines, courses, and special topics. Work with librarians ahead of time to develop course research guides to assist students in finding digital information resources.  All of these can be embedded in BlackBoard. Additionally, your subject librarian can create course-specific guides for your section, tailored to your online research assignment.

<b>Instructional Sesssions</b>

Contact your subject librarian, medical librarian, or data services librarian for support, consultations, and instructional sessions.  Your librarian can create an online session for your class to help your students develop the following skills:
  • Creating effective, meaningful research questions
  • Adopting an iterative, evolving search strategy
  • Organizing information in a thoughtful way
  • Synthesizing information into future searches
  • Detecting information gaps, and adapting search strategies to address these gaps
  • Critically evaluating information
  • Effectively using Google Scholar
  • Cited literature search tools
  • IGO/NGO resources
  • Government resources
  • Grey literature searches
  • …and much more!

<b>Open Educational Resources (OERs)</b>

Open Educational Resources are openly-available, often freely-licensed, teaching materials.  Using OERs in your online courses can ensure your students have free access to relevant materials.  Contact your subject librarian or medical librarian for more information.  Here are some online repositories with openly available course materials:

<b>Open Access Books</b>

  • Directory of Open Access Books
    The Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) is a discovery service for open access books. DOAB provides a searchable index to peer-reviewed monographs and edited collections published under an open access licence, with links to the full texts of the publications at the publisher’s website or repository.
  • Knowledge Unlatched
    Knowledge Unlatched is an open access service provider that uses crowdfunding to provide open access book and journal content.
  • Open Book Publishers
    Open Book Publishers provide high-quality academic books.
  • TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem
    Monographs remain the preeminent form of scholarly publication in the humanities and humanistic social sciences, but the funding model is broken. TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem) seeks to address this problem by moving us toward a new, more sustainable system in which monograph publishing costs are met by institutionally funded faculty book subsidies. These publication grants make it possible for presses to publish monographs in open access editions, which increases the presence of humanities and social science scholarship on the web and opens up knowledge to a truly global readership.

<b>Student Career Support Resources</b>

Link to student career support resources!  The links below, provided by the Toppel Career Center, include resources available to UM students to help them assess and build the skills needed for successful job placement after graduation.

UM Resources:

Custom Career Content for Career Circles
Career Circles are industry/academic-focused communities from the Toppel Career Center that you can go to for advice, resources, and support as you work towards pursuing your career goals. Each of the 10 circles features relevant resources, articles, jobs/internships, skill-building opportunities, job market data, mentors, and events.

Vault Career & Industry Guides (Students and Faculty)
Firsthand Vault offers comprehensive industry and career guides that provide career insights, expert advice, and connections to help students navigate their careers and make informed decisions.

Jobs & Internships by Major
Find your school/college on this page to access internship and job listings by major or field of interest available for UM students and alumni. These employers are looking to hire current students, students who are about to graduate, and/or recent alumni. For thousands more opportunities, students and alumni can log in to https://miami.joinhandshake.com/.

SkillSurvey – Get Performance Feedback (Students)
Streamline constructive feedback on your performance across eight essential career readiness skills observed at any academic or co-curricular experience through a detailed career readiness report. Go to the page to learn about how you can participate and to view a sample report.

Job Market Data
Access real-time Job Market Data directly from the Custom Career Content site overseen by the Toppel Career Center. This tool allows students, alumni, and faculty/staff to learn more about potential careers by seeing employment trends, salary data, required skills, core tasks, and more for any given occupation.

Faculty & Staff Engagement Hub by the Toppel Career Center
Toppel’s relationships with faculty and staff are crucial to serving students effectively. The Faculty & Staff Engagement Hub was created for faculty and staff to connect with Toppel and receive helpful information that can enhance the career conversations they are having with students both in and out of the classroom. At the Hub, there are top resources for students, a toolkit that can help you connect career to curriculum, graduating student outcomes and current job market data, a calendar of upcoming events, and opportunities to get involved by joining the Career Champions Network and Cane2Cane Career & Mentorship Network.


 

<b>Alternative Research Strategies</b>

Request an online instruction session with your librarian for iterative, critical search strategies for resources outside of the UM Libraries, including:
  • Effectively using Google Scholar
  • Cited literature search tools
  • IGO/NGO resources
  • Government resources
  • Grey literature searches
  • …and much more!
  • Contact Your Librarian

<b>Learning Commons Services</b>

Learning Commons at UML
The Learning Commons offers online support for a range of academic, creative, and scholarly activities, including course tutoring, help with technology, and more!  Below are services that may be of particular interest for online teaching.
  • Data & Visualization Services at UML
    The Data & Visualization Services department of the University of Miami Libraries promotes data literacy on all campuses through education, consultation, and curation. We provide equitable expert advice on the components of the research process (discover, planning, collection, preparation, analysis, publication, and long-term management).
  • Creative Studio
    Virtual support using creativity tools and technologies, such as Adobe Creative Cloud, is available from the Creative Studio via email.
  • UM Libraries Digital Collections
    This site features a growing collection of digital objects developed to preserve and support digital scholarship and the research, teaching, and learning mission of the University. Digital Collections feature materials from the collections at University of Miami Libraries, Calder Medical Library, University of Miami Archives and from distinctive collections developed in collaboration with non-library partners.
  • University of Miami Writing Center
    The Writing Center at the University of Miami strives to help all members of the university community learn more about writing and become better writers. The Writing Center is part of the College of Arts & Sciences Writing Program, and provdes services to Coral Gables, Medical, and RSMAS campuses.  The Writing Center offers free, one-on-one assistance with all types of writing concerns. Services are to grad students and faculty as well as undergraduates, for research, grant writing, as well as student learning and writing.

<b>Support for Graduate Students</b>

<b>Textbooks on Course Reserves</b>

Course Reserves will look for textbooks for classes. Please contact richter.reserves@miami.edu to request information and support.

<b>Streaming Video Resources</b>

Please contact Terri Robar at trobar@miami.edu to request streaming video resources not found in the resources below.

<b>Streaming Audio Resources</b>

We have many more streaming audio resources! Please contact Weeks Music Library for more resources.

<b>Online Primary Source Databases</b>

This is only a small selection of our online primary source collections.  Please contact your Subject Librarian to discover more resources.

Contact Information

This guide is maintained by the following individual(s):

Subject Specialist