State College of Florida, Manatee-Sarasota (FTE 7893) introduced the first of eight online Baccalaureate programs in 2011. In this poster session we’ll discuss how subject specialists worked with faculty to select the best eBooks and purchasing model for these programs. You’ll also learn about various eBook models, and how we used LibGuides to promote the resources for each program, and provide instruction for distance learning students.
Our first program was the Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN). We wanted our BSN students to become familiar with the same resources they would use in the workplace. Since Rittenhouse provides the hospital eBook collection, we selected them as our eBook vendor. Faculty selected 2-4 books for each of the courses, and we created Course Reserve Shelves in the Rittenhouse database and loaded MARC records into our catalog. We also purchased the Springer eBook collection, which allows unlimited simultaneous access and downloading to devices. The Informatics textbook is published by Springer. Additionally, a community group donated 23 Kindles to the program.
Early Childhood Education was the second program offered. We established a print picture book collection, added a monthly subscription to Junior Library Guild, and online access to picture books in our Overdrive Collection. Course descriptions and available syllabi were reviewed and we selected 30 NetLibrary eBooks.
For the next five programs, we established an eBrary PDA Collection, for cost-effective access to more resources. We created profiles and selected 1,010 titles; 20 titles triggered, which is 1.98% of the total set. PDA worked well for the Homeland Security, Public Safety and International Business, but was not sufficient for Energy Technology Management and Technology Management. To support these, we added a 50 title-9 seat subscription to the Safari Tech & Business Collection, and an unlimited, simultaneous access subscription to the Gale Virtual Reference Library.