LIBER Educational Resources Working Group

Librarians and Educational Resources

Libraries support their faculty with educational collections: on-site, online and/or open, as books, e-textbooks, coursepacks, educational platforms, video, in 3D or VR, etc. The WG on ER will help librarians with their support on how to find, use, create and share educational resources.

How to find

The discovery of educational content requires a different focus, with regards to educational level, language, quality assurance, and where to find it. Traditionally, libraries have always supported teaching with the provision of textbooks. Books on reading lists are available at the library, and teachers are supported when setting up the lists and choosing the right versions. For several years now, reading list software is taken into production in connection to library systems to help setting up the lists. But to find and make available all content that is consistent with the intended learning outcomes, requires more than the traditional library discovery.

How to use

What are restrictions in copyright when it comes to use of material in an educational environment? What can be used for what educational level? Can material be edited and re-used in a different setting? And can e-textbooks be bought only at enormous costs for single concurrent users or can we work together in changing publisher models?

How to create

Educational resources should not just transfer passive knowledge, but should seduce students into active learning and participation. What does that mean for the creation of educational material? Which pedagogical approaches can be applied? And how can we trust the quality, when peer review processes are not in place as they are in the publication process of research publications? There are many platforms and publishing tools that can help teachers create e-textbooks. The library can help setting up these platforms, offering support for using them and managing the content.

How to share

While teaching online, teachers create courses and content that is worth of being shared among colleagues. The library can help preserving newly created content, and can support sharing this content with the right licenses and copyright compliance. As OER repositories have existed for a long time already, use and demand have risen enormously, and librarians are needed to manage the repositories and help their faculty use them. Supporting open education through Open Educational Resources is a growing topic for librarians. While OER Librarian is a job title at libraries in the US, European libraries have started to work in this area as well. With practical support for creation, sharing and finding OER but also with strategy, lobby and policy building, making use of experiences in the field of Open Access/ Open Science.

Suggested Aims and Work Packages

From 2023-2024 we want to focus on open textbooks, specifically in the areas of:

1. Discoverability and collection curation (making open textbooks more easily discoverable and used through libraries for the benefit of learners, and for the benefit of teachers so they can find and re-use open textbooks, and promote their own work)
2. Peer review and evaluation (quality assessment of open textbooks both during the publication process and beyond, so librarians are able to choose which books and collections to add to discovery tools (e.g. library catalogues and library guides), and recommend titles to others)
3. Measuring and assessing impact (e.g. counting downloads, views, translations, and adaptations of open textbooks in order to incentivise the creation of open textbooks for authors, and to demonstrate the impact and the benefits of going open)

Dependent on the number of working group members and their interests, further aims could be:

1. Monitoring the development of publishers’ open access models for textbooks and the prices of book publication charges (BPCs) for textbooks in order to advise our researchers and university teachers:
   1. of open-access publishing routes
   2. of sources of funding for BPCs in each country, if available
2. Monitoring licensing models of paid e-textbooks and the trends in pricing for European academic / research libraries
3. Advising authors on how to negotiate with publishers to transform their own closed textbooks into open textbooks

Key partners and Collaboration

SPARC Europe / ENOEL

The LIBER working group will work closely with the SPARC Europe-led European Network of Open Education Librarians (ENOEL) on achieving common goals and on their implementation. Both the LIBER working group and ENOEL support and promote open textbooks and open education in their networks.

LIBER Open Access Working Group

LIBER Copyright & Legal Matters Working Group

Group Administration and Chair(s)

The chair(s) is in post for a maximum of two years, at the end of which nominations shall be sought and a new chair(s) elected for the following two years

The chair(s) identifies and proposes aims on which the group should focus for the duration of their time as chair. This may be done through wider consultation within the group and with guidance from the Steering Committee chair

Once the aims for that period have been agreed on, the group will put out a call for members who are interested in taking them forward

Work packages will be derived from the aims, and working group members will contribute to specific work packages. Working group members will be expected to spend about one day per month on working group-related tasks.