Kortext Open Resources Collection: a year in review
Academic libraries are increasingly turning to open access content and Open Educational Resources (OERs) as a sustainable way to provide diverse content.
That message came across loud and clear from respondents to this year’s Kortext Annual Librarian Survey (access the full report).
As a result, we’ve been inspired to take a closer look at how our open eBooks have been used this academic year.
An ever-growing collection
The Kortext Open Resources Collection now hosts more than 15,000 titles from around 250 publishers. That’s an increase of over 50% compared to 2022/23.
This growth is thanks to the hard work of our dedicated team members who are continually sourcing open access content and OERs on a wide range of topics to add to our platform.
2023/24 in numbers
Here are the total figures for our key usage metrics:
- Users = 28,077
- Pages accessed = 531,295
- Study time in hours = 3,858
- Study sessions = 43,130
- Annotations = 5,730
- Searches = 12,343
- Downloads = 6,537
Now, let’s drill down into these statistics a bit further.
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Robert Zecker, A Road to Peace and Freedom
This was our top book in several categories, with the most users (912), study sessions (1,334) and downloads (426) this academic year.
Zecker explores the International Workers Order, an American consortium of mutual self-insurance societies that advocated for workers’ rights and healthcare on behalf of its diverse membership. Drawing on primary sources, it gives voice to IWO’s working-class members. The eventual dismantling of the organisation and suppression of its ideals is still relevant today.
Marcin Lis, Higher Education Institutions and Digital Transformation
Lis achieved the top spot for the book with the most pages accessed – a whopping 10,101 pages of this text were viewed in 2023/24.
It examines the collaborative efforts of businesses and higher education institutions to effect digital transformation in an increasing complex post-pandemic landscape – a topic that’s central to our mission here at Kortext. The book presents a model approach for developing managerial competencies, and is relevant for students of entrepreneurship and strategy.
Siska Noviaristanti and Ong Hway Boon (eds.), Sustainable Future: Trends, Strategies and Development
This emerged as the book our users spent the most time reading, clocking up an impressive 81 hours of collective study time. It also recorded the highest amount of content searches (198).
Sustainable Future contains papers presented at the 3rd Conference on Managing Digital Industry, Technology and Entrepreneurship. Highlighting the transformative impact of Sustainable Development Goals, it emphasises the pivotal role of digital technology to advance SDGs in management, finance, marketing, human resources, and entrepreneurship.
Dyah Ayu Wiwid Sintowoko et al., Sustainable Development in Creative Industries: Embracing Digital Culture for Humanities
Our final text explores sustainability from a different perspective, and it received the greatest number of annotations (381) this academic year – clearly sparking inspiration in many readers!
It features insights from authors across Asia and Europe who participated in the 9th Bandung Creative Movement (an annual international event in Indonesia). Offering a innovative view of sustainability’s role in shaping the creative sector, it discusses the intersection of sustainable development with arts and culture, design and architecture, technology, and business.
Get reading!
Will any of our most popular books be making their way onto your online bookshelf or reading list? To access these, and many others, sign in to your Kortext account and select ‘Collections’.
You don’t have to be an existing Kortext customer to benefit from our Open Resources Collection. Book a discovery call today to find out more.
