1. Librarians and OER:
What’s on offer?
Todd M. Mundle, University Librarian
Caroline Daniels, Systems, Web & Interlibrary Loan Librarian
Kwantlen Polytechnic University

2. Librarians and OER: What’s on offer?
Splitting the hour in two:
1. ‚Exercising New Opportunities –
Embracing the role of Librarians and Open
Textbooks‛
2. ‚Leveraging Tradition – A practical look at
the Tradition of Accessibility and
Functionality with Open Textbooks‛

3. Librarians and OER: What’s on offer?
Exercising existing roles
Selection – finding, evaluating and selecting
open resources as is done for cost resources
Description – metadata and resource
description

4. Librarians and OER: What’s on offer?
Varying existing roles
Storage and management
Institutional repository options
Digital or information literacy
Helping users find and evaluate OERs

5. Librarians and OER: What’s on offer?
Exercising new opportunities
Scholarly Publishing
Librarians can help by contributing their own OERs to the
commons; screening for, indexing, and archiving quality OERs;
using OERs in their own teaching; and participating in
discussions leading toward responsible intellectual property
policies and useful standards. (ACRL Forum – 2009 ALA
Midwinter Conference)
(Belliston, C. Jeffrey. ‚Open Educational Resources: Creating the
instruction commons‛. C&RL News, May 2009 Vol. 70, No. 5
http://tinyurl.com/yhoezak )

6. Librarians and OER: What’s on offer?
Exercising new opportunities
Support and Author Education
Provide services to faculty and students to support OA
Exercising author rights
Copyright and managing intellectual property rights
Promoting open licences
http://scholcomm.acrl.ala.org/
• Author's rights
• Repositories
• Economics of publishing
• Scholarly publishing
• Data management
• Take action

7. Librarians and OER: What’s on offer?
Exercising new opportunities
Advocacy
Why OA, OER and open textbooks are good
Championing OA and OER
Promoting open licences
Working with faculty and student groups:
Making textbooks affordable – Student PIRGs project
http://bit.ly/S7q4q5

8. Librarians and OER: What’s on offer?
Exercising New Opportunities
Leveraging Traditional Roles
Source: image.ask.com

9. Librarians and OER: What’s on offer?
5 Traditional Reasons to involve
Librarians at the early stages:
1. Addressing accessibility, retrieval, and functionality
issues at the onset of the project could prove
invaluable
2. Knowledge of student ‘finding’ habits is high amongst
librarians
3. Librarian relationships with access providers could
prove useful to project outcomes
4. Masters at collaboration across sectors and institutions
5. They are eager with a high attention to detail, and will
make strong partners!

10. Librarians and OER: What’s on offer?
Metadata
Having standardized Metadata helps libraries
organize the collections so that they are
accessible from many different avenues:
• Through discovery layers
• Through our library catalogues
• Through our finding aids like subject guides
• Through Google Scholar links personalized
to the student’s home Library
Metadata also allows libraries to share the
records for their own collections.

11. Librarians and OER: What’s on offer?

12. Librarians and OER: What’s on offer?
Functionality
‚The textbook market is ripe for
technologically and economically disruptive
models‛ Rasche, G., and Shanks, S. (2011). Chapter 7: Water
on a hot skillet. Library Technology Reports, 47(8), 52-57.
• Platform neutrality vs. Device momentum
• Chapter accessibility? Downloadable?
Mobile capabilities?
• Leverage software for format flexibility – i.e.
Adobe Digital Editions

13. Librarians and OER: What’s on offer?
Stability
• Platform stability – who will house
the textbooks?
• Permanent URL’s for each record
(part of Metadata)
• Multimedia – standards?

14. Librarians and OER: What’s on offer?
Collaboration
Q. How many librarians does it take to launch a
provincial chat service?
A. 250+ and a consortia, and BCcampus
• Librarians are born collaborators and rely heavily on
each other to extend their own services
• Examples: Interlibrary Loans, AskAway, WriteAway,
CUFTS Open Access collections, LibGuides …

15. Librarians and OER: What’s on offer?
Challenges
• Scalability and stability – long term
plans for collection growth and new
project partners
• Shift in mindset – traditionally
bookstores have managed textbooks
rather than libraries; being involved
at the onset will allow librarians to
take on a champion’s role.

16. Librarians and OER: What’s on offer?
Questions?
Todd M. Mundle
todd.mundle@kwantlen.ca
Caroline Daniels
caroline.daniels@kwantlen.ca