Blurring Lines - Open Educational Resources: The Rise of the Library and Navigating the 'Spectrum of Affordability'

摘要

In early 2014, I penned an article for Against the Grain detailing three reasons why I believed the university library should become the hub of access to course materials. The second and third reasons I developed, (the digital nature of content and the value of the data produced by "clicks and views" of that digital content) strike me in hindsight as good reasons for the institution writ large to manage access to learning content rather than the library specifically. But the first reason I detailed, "…course content should be … included in student tuition…" is more relevant today as faculty seek, increasingly, to leverage library-licensed content alongside open educational resources (OERs) and traditional text and learning content from big publishers like Pearson, Wiley, McGraw Hill and others. The university library and the growing cadre of OER librarians and instructional design librarians are exceptionally well-situated to be the hub of access to course content, faculty support in the discovery of needed content and also for the delivery of tools and platforms capable of aligning to, or replacing, current learning management systems, online homework products and other supporting frameworks for online education, such as on-demand tutoring services.