Chag Pesach sameach!

Passover Seder plate, via Wikimedia Commons, by Edsel Little.

[This post, by Edward Schabes, Library Assistant, Midtown, was written in 2018 and has been updated for publication in April 2024.]

Passover is the one Holiday besides the New Year which is celebrated by a majority of all Jews from around the globe. The preparations for this Holiday very often drive people nuts.  The commandment is not to have any leavened product in your home during this 8 day period; this means that the house must be cleared of bread and all other such foodstuffs. And that’s on top of cleaning and cooking in preparation for the family gathering. Especially with small children in the household, it’s not hard to see why people get a little crazy at this time of year!  

This Holiday also brings back very pleasant memories for many, because it is a coming together of family.  For example, I most remember my grandmother coming over every year.  She used to make an extraordinarily large jar of horseradish with beets, and a large jar of applesauce.  I also remember my mother taking out a grinder and grinding fish to create the fish loaf that we ate at the Seder.

Passover is known for the eating of unleavened bread and the asking of questions by children during Seder, the ritual meal that commemorates the Exodus from Egypt.  The most famous questions are usually asked by the youngest child and are called the four questions. For example, “Why is this night different from all other nights?” and, “Why do we dip not once but twice during the Seder?”. For a full explanation of the rituals of Passover, consult library titles such as Telling the Story: A Passover Haggadah Explained. 

Besides eating unleavened bread the type of foods eaten on Passover varies between Jews with a European heritage and Jews with a Middle East or Spanish heritage.  Everyone eats meat, chicken, and dairy foods (though not together with meat), but those with a Middle Eastern or Spanish heritage eat rice, corn, or peas, while those with a European heritage do not.

The theme of Passover is freedom and becoming a nation. In ancient times, the Jews escaped slavery in Egypt and gained their freedom. This was also the time that Jews became a nation, an entity beyond the members of a single family.  This year Pesach will begin at sunset on April 22nd and will end at sunset on April 30th.

Meet our 2023 OER Faculty Fellows!

As our OE Week ’24 coverage continues, let’s take a look at Touro’s OER Faculty Fellowship!

The Library’s Open Educational Resources (OER) Faculty Fellowship helps guide faculty through the process of selecting, adapting, or creating OER for use in their classes, instead of using expensive commercial textbooks. This fellowship has been the primary driver of OER use at Touro University for the past three years.

In January, we officially closed the book on our 2023 fellowship. This was an exciting year for the fellowship, as we had 9 faculty fellows, our largest cohort yet! This cohort includes faculty from Touro University New York’s undergraduate and graduate programs, Touro Law Center, Touro University Nevada, Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine, and Touro’s Physician Assistant program. Their completed OER projects will all be published on Touro Scholar’s Open Touro-created resources page.

Congratulations to the 9 OER Fellows from 2023 for completing the 6-month fellowship and developing OER for use in their classes!

Meet our 2023 cohort of OER Faculty Fellows below:

Bates Visual Guide to Physical Examination

Photo via Pexels by Thirdman

Touro University Libraries has recently added Bates Visual Guide to Physical Examination to our database collection. This database is of great value to our Health Sciences students, particularly our students in our Physician Assistant program. Students and faculty in other disciplines may also benefit from the database either for their professional studies or for their personal interest.

Bates Visual Guide to Physical Examination contains video content that teaches students how to conduct a full body examination, communicate effectively with patients, and view symptom specific case studies. The videos are in depth and are a total of 8 hours. There are 3 video tabs that are available for viewing.

The first video tab contains the Physical Examination videos. These videos focus on conducting an examination on each body system. There are also videos on conducting an overall head-to-toe assessment for infants, children, as well as adults and seniors. For each body system, users can either view the videos in small chapters or play the entire video series.

The second video tab contains the Communication and Interpersonal Skills videos. This section focuses on how to have effective dialogue with patients. These videos concentrate on topics like active listening, guided questioning, empathetic responses, nonverbal communication, and interactions with various patient populations. Health Science students find these videos particularly useful since having open and honest dialogue with a patient is crucial for health professionals to be able to perform their job well.

Lastly, the third video tab is OSCE Clinical Skills videos. These videos give students case studies to watch and follow along with. These case studies involve patient history taking as well as performing physical assessments of a patient based on the symptoms they present. The case studies will present diagnostic considerations, diagnostic workup, and summary. These videos present the most accurate real world scenario that most health science professionals will encounter in their practice

To find Bates Visual Guide to Physical Examination, go to the Touro Library homepage and Log In with your TouroOne credentials to use all the library services. After logging in, click on the link that says Databases and you will be redirected to the Find Articles page. Choose Bates Visual Guide to Physical Examination from the list of databases on the page. This will bring you to the Bates database. Please feel free to contact a librarian if you have any questions.

[Post by by Annette Carr, edited by Emma Larson-Whittaker]

2023 OER Faculty Fellowship Announcement

Touro University Libraries, in collaboration with The Office of the Provost, is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2023 Touro University Open Educational Resources (OER) Faculty Fellowship. This fellowship awards faculty a stipend of $500 to develop OER for use in their courses. At the end of the fellowship, the fellows’ OER projects will be published on Touro Scholar and in public OER repositories. Our 2023 OER fellows are:

Gena Bardwell, MFA
Director, General Education
Chair and Assistant Professor, Speech and Communication
Touro University NY, NYSCAS

David Nussbaum, MA 
Assistant Professor, Speech and Communication 
Touro University NY, NYSCAS 

Michelle Buccinna, OTD, OTR/L 
Director, Long Island Campus, Occupational Therapy MS 
Assistant Professor, Occupational Therapy MS 
Touro University NY, School of Health Sciences 

Regina Burch, AB, MSA, JD  
Interim Assistant Dean for Academic Excellence and Bar Success   
Visiting Professor of Law 
Touro Law Center 

Stephanie Klinesmith, MS  
Instructor of Anatomy and Neuroanatomy 
Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine, Middletown 

Jacqueline Randa, PT, DPT, PhD, NCS, OCS 
Assistant Professor, School of Physical Therapy 
Touro University Nevada 

Deborah Ratti, PhD  
Assistant Professor, Sociology 
Touro University NY, NYSCAS 

Tom Rozinski, JD, MA 
Associate Professor and Deputy Chair for Lander College for Men 
Department of Political Science 
Touro University NY 

James Van Rhee, MS, PA-C 
Associate Professor and Chair of Assessment and Remediation  
PA Program 
Touro University  

Ancillary Resources for OER: More than just Textbooks!

Did you know that open educational resources (OER) can be more than simply textbooks? Many people think of a textbook, that standard tool for teaching and learning, when they think of OER. But did you know that OER can be much more than just textbooks? There are great many ancillary resources available as OER as well, and the depth and variety of what’s available is only growing.

Photo by Hal Gatewood on Unsplash

Library Guides on ChatGPT are Here!

Screenshot, ChatGPT website

Do you have questions about ChatGPT?

We’re sure you do!

Apply now! 2023 OER Faculty Fellowship

It’s that time of year again!

The Touro University Libraries, in collaboration with The Office of the Provost, is pleased to announce the Touro University Open Educational Resources (OER) Faculty Fellowship 2023.

This fellowship is intended to support faculty to develop OER for use in their courses. All full-time faculty, across all Touro University departments and campuses, with anticipated teaching responsibilities for the 2023-2024 academic year are eligible to apply. The fellowship period will be from July 2023 to December 2023. The deadline for submission is June 16, 2023. We strongly encourage interested faculty to contact Kirk Snyder (OER & Instruction Librarian) before submitting an application. Apply here! 

Fellows receive a stipend of $500 for their full participation in the fellowship program and finished OER to be used in their course within the next calendar year. The fellowship period is six months long. 

Participants will: 

• Develop an open educational resource for a specific course; completing the work by the end of the fellowship and publishing the finished work via Touro Scholar 
• Retain copyright to their materials and all resources will be released under a Creative Commons license allowing derivatives 
• Use their OER project materials in their course within the next calendar year
• Attend meetings with the OER librarian as needed and meetings with the cohort of OER Fellows monthly, during the fellowship term; these meetings will be held via Zoom 
• Complete trainings and short assessments during the fellowship term 
• Present their work to the campus at a to-be-determined event/date 
• Engage in OER advocacy efforts at Touro, as an OER ambassador during the fellowship term and beyond 
• Receive faculty development digital badges

Eligibility: 

• Any full-time faculty member in the Touro University System with anticipated teaching responsibilities for the following academic year.

Apply by June 16th to be considered for the fellowship, and please share this great opportunity with colleagues across Touro far and wide!

[post contributed by Kirk Snyder, OER & Instruction Librarian, Cross River Campus]

How RefWorks Can Work For You

As many of you already know, Touro students have access to RefWorks through our library website. RefWorks makes citing your sources more straightforward than ever, as you can store and organize all your resources in one place. RefWorks also makes it easy to share your references with co-authors or students and create bibliographies for your article in over 6,000 different styles!  

Where to start:

To use RefWorks, you must make an account using your Touro student email address. Once you have signed up, you can drag and drop your sources into RefWorks, where you can also organize them by assignment.

Textbook Heroes: Kenneth Bigel

Kenneth S. Bigel, Lander College for Men.

Welcome to our series recognizing champions of free and affordable course materials at Touro! These “Textbook Heroes” have made a difference in the lives of our students by lowering the cost of their degrees. Do you know someone who fits the bill? Nominate them (or yourself) by contacting the Libraries.

Dr. Bigel has partnered with Touro Libraries to publish a series of peer-reviewed open textbooks on the Pressbooks platform. Introduction to Financial Analysis, the first book in the series is available here.

Who are you? Tell us more about you and the course you teach. 

I am a former Wall Street executive who did stints in Asset Management, International Commercial Lending, Corporate Strategic Planning, and Forensic Finance. I hold M.B.A. and Ph.D. degrees from NYU and am a Certified Financial Planner^TM registrant. I taught Finance at NYU from 1989-1998 and since 2000 have been teaching Finance with pleasure at the Lander College for Men, Touro University. I have published two e-books in a series which will eventually number five OER volumes. Over the years, I have found that my students ask questions from perspectives that I had not considered. I have endeavored to inculcate these questions into my books. These texts were written for them and the students have taught me so much. Thus, the texts are written in a most friendly manner and are replete with examples and exercises so that the learner can proceed smoothly through the material.  

Textbook Heroes: David Nussbaum

Assistant Professor David Nussbaum

Welcome to our series recognizing champions of free and affordable course materials at Touro! These “Textbook Heroes” have made a difference in the lives of our students by lowering the cost of their degrees. Do you know someone who fits the bill? Nominate them (or yourself) by contacting the Libraries.

Who are you? Tell us more about you and the course you teach.

I’m David Nussbaum, an assistant professor at Touro in the Speech and Communications department.