You may be aware of MIT Press’s Open Access initiative, Direct to Open (D2O). The University of Alberta Library supports D2O through the Canadian Research Knowledge Network.
D2O is an effort to raise enough funds from libraries to release the Press’s annual frontlist on an open access basis. Rather than buying MIT Press’s new books for our collection each year, we help fund these books, as the Press puts it, “once for the world.”
MIT Press recently announced the success of D2O. All 2022 scholarly monographs will be released OA. For our part, thanks to the work of CatMet colleagues, this new stream of OA ebooks has been integrated into our cataloguing processes.
As a perk of supporting D2O, the U of A community also enjoys online access to MIT Press’s monograph backfile of approximately 2,500 ebooks. This is a wonderful backfile containing important works across architecture, linguistics, game studies, new media, neuroscience, computer science (e.g., I noticed Wiener’s Cybernetics!), and more. Thanks to the CatMet team for cataloguing the backfile.
A final note — D2O does not include MIT Press’s STEM trade books. These are sold separately, and not OA. We continue to buy this collection from the Press via IEEE.