Using Online Library Materials for Teaching

VCU Libraries are a great resource for course materials. Our materials come in a variety of formats, from books to articles to films and a lot in between, and cover a wide breadth of disciplines. Plus, they are freely available to VCU faculty and students!

Places to find online library materials for course content:

• Course-Friendly Digital Content
• Streaming Media Databases
• VCU Libraries Digital Collections
• VIVA Faculty Ebook Portal (For additional details on how to access, navigate, and request books using the VIVA Faculty Ebook Portal, review the VIVA Faculty Ebook Portal Overview or reach out to the Open Educational Resources Librarian.)

Your Open Educational Resources Librarian or your subject area specialist librarians can also help you identify course materials.

Not seeing what you need?

• Suggest a Purchase Form
• Film Streaming Request Form

Considerations for teaching with online library materials

It’s important to be aware that different resources may have different types and levels of access, which may make them more or less suitable for classroom use. For example, some ebooks allow for unlimited concurrent users, while some only allow for a single user at a time to access the book. If you’ve identified a library resource that you’d like to use, we recommend reaching out to the Open Educational Resources Librarian or your subject area specialist librarian to confirm whether the access model will work for your course or if we can upgrade our access to suit your teaching needs.

Lastly, when sharing library resources with your students, it is important to use permalinks or embed content directly to ensure that access is as seamless as possible.