Ebooks are coming of age in education, as this exciting collection commissioned by Jisc demonstrates.
Case studies, reflecting ebook success stories across the higher and further education sectors, include: An innovative app to encourage ebook take-up in a Welsh college; A partnership between a library and research centre to create open access monographs and midigraphs; Several examples of creative negotiations with ebook publishers.
Insight chapters address hot topics in the ebook universe, including: The changing world of access to scholarly digital content in the mobile environment; The challenges faced by the library as online distance learning moves from margin to mainstream; How ebooks have the potential to meet a wide range of accessibility needs; Experimentation with ebooks as a shared service.
This collection will provide inspiration and guidance to institutions as they develop projects and services to support students and researchers and will be of interest to library practitioners, publishers, ebook vendors, information professionals, teachers, lecturers and students.
Jisc, in collaboration with Ubiquity Press, is pleased to be making this publication available open access on a CC-BY licence.
Book Details
Educational Visions looks to future developments in educational technology by reviewing our history of computers and education, covering themes such as learning analytics and design, inquiry learning, citizen science, inclusion, and learning at scale. The book shows how successful innovations can be built over time, informs readers about current practice and demonstrates how they can use this work themselves.
Available December 2019
Decentralised energy supply turns from a niche product into a mass phenomenon – not only with the rise of renewable energies such as solar, wind or biomass, but
also with micro co-generation, residential storage and autonomous island systems. The edited volume “Decentralised Energy – a Global Game Changer“ portrays the transformation of energy supply into a decentralised structure from two angles: governance and business model innovation, with governments and entrepreneurs as two complementary “agents of change”.
Available January 2020
This volume presents ten visual essays that reflect on the historical, cultural and socio-political legacies of empires. Drawing on a variety of visual genres and forms, including photographs, illustrated advertisements, stills from site-specific art performances and films, and maps, the book illuminates the contours of empire’s social worlds and its political legacies through the visual essay. The guiding, titular metaphor, sharpening the haze, captures our commitment to frame empire from different vantage points, seeking focus within its plural modes of power. We contend that critical scholarship on empires would benefit from more creative attempts to reveal and confront empire. Broadly, the essays track a course from interrogations of imperial pasts to subversive reinscriptions of imperial images in the present, even as both projects inform each author’s intervention.
Available January 2020
The monograph considers influence over time of Fairtrade and Rainforest Alliance in 10 Costa Rican coffee farming communities. In-country perspectives and relevant historic and contemporary literature inform findings. Misaligned intentions to outcomes; different sustainability approaches; and variable influence is observed. There is opportunity to: consider when certifications are most useful; develop locally relevant standards; vertically integrate sourcing chains; consider how complementary mechanisms can be used alongside, or to improve certification approach. Sustainability of coffee as a cash crop, considering influence on biodiversity, and the possible implication of reduced coffee crop density for consumers, the market and farming landscapes, is considered.
Available December 2019
While widely considered a core pillar of the peace and security architecture, Security Sector Reform (SSR) is coming under fire. SSR theory and practice are criticized for being overly focused on traditional conflict and post-conflict settings and for being unable to adjust to unconventional settings marked by chronic crime and terrorism. SSR tends to be disproportionately focused on national institutions and less amenable to engaging at the subnational scale. Drawing on the experiences of so-called ‘citizen security’ measures in cities across Latin America and the Caribbean, this paper offers some opportunities for renewing and revitalizing SSR. The emphasis of citizen security interventions on multiple forms of insecurity, data-driven and evidence-informed prevention, the promotion of social cohesion and efficacy and designing crime prevention into the social and built environment are all insights that can positively reinforce comprehensive SSR measures in the 21st century.
Available December 2019