The Library’s Role in OERs

Your Libraries exists to support Faculty and their use of OERs in 4 ways:

Library as the Researcher – Libraries help Faculty weed through the mountains of material out there and show them where to get started. Faculty are content experts, but Libraries are navigational experts that guide Faculty to specific resources. Library staff can help with issues such as licensing, copyright, CC video and locating reliable, peer-reviewed information.               

Library as the Curator – Libraries actively collect OER materials for all courses and keep them accessible for Faculty via an OER Libguide. Some of the categories within this Libguide are Repositories, Open Textbooks, e-Journals, Images, Audio and Videos. The guide is basically a website where Faculty discover quick and accurate answers to a wealth of OER materials.

DOAJ.org (The Directory of Open Access Journals & Articles)

Open Text Library (Open Textbooks with Open Licence)

Library as an Educator – Open versus Free Content. By definition, FREE refers to Library materials that don’t cost anything because the Library has paid a subscription fee for its access and is behind a firewall. The materials are called FREE, but aren’t available to everyone in the world. OPEN is important to Faculty as it allows for no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution with restrictions. FREE is important to students. When creating an OER, you WANT it to be available to everyone. It’s therefore important to have OPEN versus FREE content as the end user may or may not have access to the same e-Resource and will then need to make alternate arrangements. 

Library as Content Creator – Libraries help create content to be used in courses. We do this through Content Collection, One-on-One Consultations with Faculty, In-person or Virtual Presentations and/or Workshops, act as the “Copyright Go-To” person, keep current with available resources and the latest content updates and by Marketing Library Support and the Promoting of OERs.

It’s easy to be overwhelmed when first getting acquainted with Open Educational Resources. Scheduling a Reference Interview with us is the best way to get started or to get additional help. For more information, please contact [email protected]