The British Library Becomes First Non-University Institution to Join UK’s FutureLearn MOOC
From a BL Announcement:
The British Library has announced its intention to join the UK’s MOOC platform FutureLearn offering participants of its online courses access to the Library’s unique digitised resources. The Library will be the first non-university research institution to join the initiative, and is among five university partners announced today during a major business and skills mission to India with the Prime Minister.
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The first ever UK Mooc, FutureLearn was launched by the Open University last December and includes partnerships with eighteen UK universities. Existing Library digital resources will be made available on FutureLearn, complementing plans for large-scale participation in online lectures and courses which are due to start later this year. The Library’s freely available digital collections include over 800 medieval manuscripts, 40,000 nineteenth-century books and 50,000 sound recordings, and continue to grow eah year.
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Roly Keating, Chief Executive of the British Library, said: “FutureLearn is an exciting development in higher education, with the potential to enable mass access to valuable resources and teaching anywhere in the world, for free. As the home of a growing set of unique and valuable digital resources, the British Library is looking forward to partnering with The Open University and widening access to our collections\ for even more researchers online worldwide as the initiative develops.”
Read the Complete Announcement
Includes comment from Prime MinisterDavid Cameron.
Visit the Futurelean Web Sit
Filed under: Digital Collections, Interactive Tools, Lecture, Libraries, News
About Gary Price
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.