EWP Digital Anthology

In Fall 2019, the Expository Writing Program's Digital Anthology for Writers replaced the print anthology used by about 3500 students per year in the College of Arts and Sciences' first-year writing classes. In addition to being free, it is more diverse, inclusive, and accessible than the print anthology. The anthology consists of accessible pdfs from databases licensed by NYU Libraries stored in Google Drive and delivered through a Zotero folder collection. This approach combines the affordances of program-wide print anthologies and individualized digital collections by allowing access through browsing or direct linking to items.

Partner: NYU Libraries

Each item in the Anthology includes descriptive citation and reference information. Each item’s Zotero page provides two access points, exclusive to the NYU community: a link to the essay’s location in the NYU library and a direct link to the downloadable PDF in NYU’s Google Drive. To open the direct link, you will need to be logged in to your NYU Google account.

Every PDF in the Google Drive has been remediated to meet accessibility standards. This means that all the documents are fully accessible by screen readers and other assistive devices. The text with the PDFs is also searchable.

The Digital Anthology for Writers was developed in collaboration with many teams and offices at NYU and has been reviewed and approved by our lawyers and librarians. Every text in the Anthology has been purchased by the NYU Library. The PDF documents can only be accessed by those with NYU Google accounts. These measures ensure the Anthology is in complete copyright compliance.

The tags applied to each text indicate a high-level description of the themes of each essay. These tags aren’t structured as a search function, but are meant to introduce relevant vocabulary to students and spark their own research interests.

User Guide for the Digital Anthology