Four pioneers from the Open Educational Resources community offered their insights into “The transformative potential of Open Educational Resources (OER)” at the SPARC-ACRL Forum, held during the 2009 American Library Association Midwinter Meeting in Denver, CO.
The forum, hosted by SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) and the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), introduced OER and the philosophy behind them to the wider library community, highlight examples of how different constituencies were currently advancing OER on campuses, and offered suggestions for how libraries could further engage to support OER.
OER are a logical extension of what the library community supports in the Open Access movement, and underscore the need for the larger playing field on which scholarly communication takes place to be made more equitable. OER focus not only on journals, but also on full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials or techniques that are critical in the learning environment.