Providing reliable and useful resources is a large part of the mission of our Campus Library.  This includes numerous databases, e-books, and media that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars that are paid to aggregate vendors, producers and publishers. More and more resources are becoming “open access,” meaning they are publicly accessible and free to use. However, much content needed by academic library users still comes with a cost.

That situation is changing, in an interim response to the coronavirus pandemic.  Many formerly subscription-only resources are temporarily open access, some through April, some until June and some open-ended. To help our users discover newly-free resources, we have created a resource guide with access information: https://iue.libguides.com/ERFO/College. We will continue to update this as new academic resources become available for open access.

We also want to serve families and youth, providing creative and engaging learning content. So in our “ERFO” guide https://iue.libguides.com/ERFO we’ve curated numerous online sites, arranged by subject area, including library/research, arts, health, history, math, play, science, Spanish, writing, and virtual tours. There also is a Community page, with links to sources of reliable information.

We welcome any input you have related to no-cost resources that will help individuals continue learning remotely. There is such a variety of content that may be new and interesting, and we hope you enjoy the free learning journey! Questions? Ask Us! iueref@iue.edu