AcademicPub and Getty Images, A Picture Perfect Match

Today we released an upgrade to the AcademicPub course pack creation platform including a number of major improvements (more of which we'll feature here in the days to come). What we're particularly excited about is our partnership with Getty Images and the creation of our Image Catalog. 

Educators using AcademicPub are already able add material to their textbooks from over 8 million pieces of text based content from over 240 different publishers along with PDFs, Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, blog posts, web pages, and embedded links. Starting today they can add images from the vast and impressive Getty Library. 

And even better? Each quality image costs students just 50¢.

Here's how it works:

You can still search and browse our Content Library, but for Getty Images you'll want to select our Image Catalog on the Add Content page:

Next you'll want to select a search term:

Here we've gone with Van Gogh:

Once we've selected an image the platform will show us additional information including the title and caption that Getty has provided.

Next we can add our own explanatory text and section title before adding the image to our project.

See the press release announcing the Getty and AcademicPub partnership for more information.

And be sure to visit us on the web and start your course pack for the fall semester today.

AcademicPub Off the Shelf featured in Library Journal

AcademicPub launched “Off The Shelf,” a new component of its Custom College Plus course pack publishing solution that will help institutions maximize the value of their existing licensing arrangements with journals, databases, and other content providers 

Read the whole article here.

New Service from AcademicPub Adds Library Content Deals

AcademicPub is adding a new service to its AcademicPub Custom College Plus, an automated coursepack service that allows faculty to create legal customized textbooks in digital or print formats from a database of licensed content. AcademicPub is now offering Off The Shelf, a new service that allows schools to integrate any of its standing content licensing agreements into the AcademicPub Custom College Plus Content Library.

Read the whole article from Publisher's Weekly Here.

Learn More About AcademicPub.

We Attended AAUP 2013!

AAUP 2013: Association of American University Presses
June 20-22, 2013
Boston, MA
Seaport Hotel 

Attending:
Liza Murphy, SVP, Sales & Business Development
lmurphy@academicpub.com 

Kerry Cahill, Sales Director
kcahill@academicpub.com

Learn More About AcademicPub.

AcademicPub Launches Custom Digital Solution for College and University Libraries

New York, NY, June 11, 2013 - AcademicPub™, the world's leading provider of atomized content for the higher education community, today announced that the AcademicPub Content Library™ - filled with 8 million pieces of content from 240+ quality academic publishers, can now be customized for the library of a college, university or statewide higher education system partner.  AcademicPub Off The Shelf™ is a 100% tailored solution designed to maximize a school's existing content licensing arrangements. AcademicPub will seamlessly integrate the institution's pricing relationships into the AcademicPub Content Library, passing all savings to the student. The announcement was made by Caroline Vanderlip, CEO of AcademicPub parent SharedBook Inc.  AcademicPub Off The Shelf is a new component of CUSTOM COLLEGE PLUS™, AcademicPub's co-branded custom publishing solution for institutions of higher education. Spurred by the more prominent role of libraries in school and system-wide efforts to provide content choice and affordability to students, AcademicPub Off The Shelf allows schools to set and control prices to reflect established university agreements with publishers. These adopting institutions will remain 100% copyright compliant, and give students the mobility they want with packaged course materials that are available on any device.  "Gone are the days when a student sees the bookstore as the place to buy books, and the library as a quiet place to study and do research," said Vanderlip. "New technologies in the areas of information delivery and user-driven content selection, such as what AcademicPub provides, continue to make libraries a focal point of learning innovation."  Added Vanderlip: "Our objective is to empower faculty with the tools necessary to provide affordable, high-quality academic materials for their students. Academic libraries are the faculty's best partner in being able to source the most applicable content for a course and now they can extend those capabilities to course pack creation."  About AcademicPub Recently named to the 2013 list of "Cool Vendors" in Education by Gartner, Inc., AcademicPub is SharedBook Inc's technology platform for higher education. With a few clicks of a mouse, an instructor can assemble, compose, price and deliver custom books - in eBook and/or print format. AcademicPub allows for immediate creation and inclusion of copyright-cleared content from anywhere, such as web articles, third party content, self-generated lectures or from the 8 million-plus units of cleared material provided by the 240+ publishers in the AcademicPub Content Library. The dual benefit is a fast and easy way for educators to provide an engaging educational experience, with lower prices and up-to-the-minute materials for students. More information and free registration for faculty is available at www.academicpub.com. Headquartered in New York since 2004, SharedBook Inc. is privately held and can be found at www.sharedbook.com.  Contact Info  James A. Boyle Boyle Public Affairs jim@boylepublicaffairs.com 571-213-3979

How do People Study for MOOCs?

Picture from Flickr User S B F Ryan

Research in Practice and Assessments recently put out a study regarding "Learning in the Worldwide Classroom" (available here).

The beauty of online courses and MOOCs is their seamless ability to integrate any number of media sources for students to study from. Their own homework, archived class discussions, labs, lecture videos, lecture questions, wikis, and tutorials are all fair game.

But when it comes to exams, both midterm and final, one source stood above the rest. The study found that by far and away the materials that the student was most likely to reference in a testing situation was, yes, the textbook. This was true even as the book may have been neglected earlier in the course.

The reasoning? When it comes to exam time, according to the study, it's all about "the ease referencing of the book for finding particular help."

Digital materials are great (and at AcademicPub we happily provide advanced eBook copies of our course packs, filled with rich media, for that very reason), but time has hardly passed the physical textbook by yet (which is why we also provide perfect bound, printed versions of our course readers as well).

The question going forward, to us, is not just how to digitally deliver the best and most varied contents, but also how to deliver the best reference materials, what's really beyond the textbook, if anything, and not just another supplement beside it?

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We went to the APSCU Annual Convention and Exposition

APSCU Annual Convention & Exposition
Association of Private Section Colleges and Universities
June 5-7, 2013
Orlando, FL

Attended: Alyssa Montalbano,
Marketing Manager

Want to keep up with all the latest news in education and with AcademicPub? Be sure to follow us on your social network of choice, whether that's Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or LinkedIn. And visit us on the web as well!