You may have heard the term “Open Educational Resources” or “OER” but what does it mean for you?

Today, Dr. Roberts, the OER Keynote speaker, will be discussing “how open educational practices can strengthen sustainable connections between universities, rural communities and cultural learning contexts. She will suggest how university programs can benefit from learning from and with multiple learning contexts. She will also advocate for how learning networks can provide the foundational bridge that can interconnect learning communities in order to expand learning opportunities for all learners. This keynote aims to emphasize how student-centered learning and open educational practices can expand learning opportunities for all learners, especially those from rural and culturally diverse communities who may have previously felt confused when designing their learning pathway in university contexts.”

The talk will be taking place today, Tuesday February 11th 7:30-8:30pm at Beatrice McDonald Hall Room 116. This is a free event with free parking.

For registration information, including distance delivery options, visit uaa.alaska.edu/affordable

Want to learn more about Open Educational Resources generally? Check out the Library’s Guide here: https://libguides.consortiumlibrary.org/OER

Learn how you can participate in the Great Backyard Bird Count February 14-17, 2020. Begun in 1998, it’s the first online citizen-science project to collect data on wild birds.

February is also National Bird Feeding Month. And to help you attract birds to your backyard and learn to identify them, check out this list of field guides, basic birding books, and much more found in libraries all across the state.

The Consortium Library Award for Undergraduate Research recognizes and honors an undergraduate research paper or project that demonstrates significant use of the Library’s collections or services.

The committee accepts applications from the Monday after Thanksgiving to the Monday after spring break.

This year: December 2, 2019 to March 16, 2020

The Award amount is $500

To learn more about the award and to apply please visit the Consortium Library Award guide.

… in these library books from across Alaska. You can also tempt your taste buds by browsing through just a sample of a huge collection of cookbooks the Consortium Library recently received. Bon appétit!

Richard K. Nelson, a remarkable Alaskan, passed away on Monday, November 4^th, 2019.  I never met the man, but I’ve been touched by his work for over forty years, ever since I read Hunters of the Northern Ice and Hunters of the Northern Forest in 1975.  He was an anthropologist originally from Wisconsin, and what he learned and experienced in researching his Alaskan ethnographies changed his life forever.  He eventually settled in Sitka, wrote books (including the meditative The Island Within), participated in a five-part video series accompanying Make Prayers to the Raven, and literally found his voice in creating the radio program Encounters, “A program of observations, experiences, and reflections on the world around us.”  His deep knowledge, optimism, and enthusiasm come through so clearly, as does the sound of whatever subject his parabolic microphone was capturing while he recorded his episodes in the field, be it polar bears, sandhill cranes, whales, or even — during visits to Australia — wombats.

Here are a few of Nelson’s works in the Consortium Library:

ALASKA E99.E7 N43 1969
Hunters of the Northern Ice

ALASKA E99.K84 N44 1973
Hunters of the Northern Forest: Designs for Survival Among the Alaskan Kutchin

ALASKA GN21.N45 A3 1989
The Island Within

ALASKA E99.K79 N44 1983
Make Prayers to the Raven: A Koyukon View of the Northern Forest

ALASKA QL765.N45 2005
Encounters: Radio Experiences in the North (6 CDs)

The video series Make Prayers to the Raven can be borrowed on 2 DVDs from other Alaska libraries in our system.  But you can also listen to 108 Encounters episodes simply by going here:

https://www.encountersnorth.org/listen-index

We’re lucky to have such an audio archive available: a few minutes with Richard Nelson can inform and brighten your life, and help you better appreciate the Alaska that is all around us.