July 27, 2016

Cool! Wake Forest University’s Reynolds Library Offering Mini-MOOC That Will Explore Digital Publishing Landscape

Here’s something exciting that touches on a bunch of topics we post about on infoDOCKET.

1. Libraries
2. MOOCs
3. Digital Publishing

The Z. Smith Reynolds (ZSR) Library at Wake Forest University has announced a new mini-MOOC (the second they’ve offered) that, “will look at the, “past, present, and future perfect tenses” of e-books and the digital publishing landscape.”

The ZSRx Digital Publishing mini-MOOC will run for three weeks beginning on February 4, 2014. It’s free and open to all.

From WFU:

This is the first time we’re inviting registrants from beyond the immediate Wake Forest community,” said Dr. Lynn Sutton, Dean of ZSR Library.  “This particular open and online course is designed to be a low-barrier way for folks to take their first MOOC.”

“It’s going to be free, informal, and a lot of fun,” said Kyle Denlinger, the eLearning Librarian at Wake Forest who operates the ZSRx course platform’s knobs and switches. “We think there are lots of people out there – scholars, consumers, readers, writers – who are interested in the subject, and who are looking for new ways to think about and contribute to our changing digital world.”

From the Course Web Site:

In this course, we’ll look at:

  • some basic digital publishing terms: print-on-demand, e-ink, tablet, etc.
  • advantages and disadvantages of e-books vs. p-books (i.e., price, availability, ubiquity, etc.)
  • why ISBNs are our friends
  • the e-book market, including typical e-book prices and royalty rates for e-book authors
  • advantages and disadvantages of traditional publishing vs. self-publishing
  • ways to find and download digitally-published works
  • how to produce your own self-published booklet

Here’s a video intro that’s also embedded on the course web site that you can preview now.

Register for ZSRx Digital Publishing here. 

The First ZSR Mini-MOOC

The first mini-MOOC ZSR offered ran for four weeks and began on March 18, 2013. It was called “ZSRx: The Cure for the Common Web” and was only open to Wake Forest U. alumni and parents of both current and former students.

More than 700 people registered.

Here’s the syllabus and a blog post by ZSR eLearning Librarian, Kyle Denlinger, who shares details about how it went.

Congrats to the entire ZSR Library on not only developing the concept, the series, and this mini-MOOC but for also for offering interesting and educational programming and making it available to the entire world (literally).

This course will likely be of interest to authors especially those who want to self-publish, educators (at all levels), journalists, business people, and many others.

It’s another public demonstration of how library’s (all library’s) can remain relevant and vital in the digital age. It’s also very effective promotion for the value of library’s and librarians too!

Gary Price About Gary Price

Gary Price (gprice@mediasourceinc.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. Before launching INFOdocket, Price and Shirl Kennedy were the founders and senior editors at ResourceShelf and DocuTicker for 10 years. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com, and is currently a contributing editor at Search Engine Land.

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