2019–2020 Technology Trends in Libraries

Maw, Laura

LM

Marcotte, A. (2019, March 1). Library tech leaders recommend their favorite tips and tools. American Libraries. Retrieved from https://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/2019/03/01/tech-trends-libraries/

Access to immersive technology in libraries is becoming more important as learning tools and even books enter virtual, mixed, and augmented reality platforms. With immersive tech also comes boundless learning opportunities for empathy as patrons can enter places they may have never been before, such as refugee camps and natural disaster zones. Further, as patrons increasingly look to libraries for tech training, including web and app prototyping, and digital citizenship guidance, more is expected to be done with open educational resources (OERs) in libraries.

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the adoption of OERs in libraries across the world as patrons, young and old alike, struggle to adapt to our new virtual reality. Parents, teachers, and students are all reaching out to libraries to access online learning resources and how-to tech training more than even before. I expect this trend to continue in the future, even after the pandemic ends, because people will have become more comfortable with online learning.

The Open Textbook Toolkit by Waller, Cross, & Rigling

Gutierrez, Vincente         

      

Waller, M., Cross, W. M., & Rigling, L. (2017). The Open Textbook Toolkit. Journal of Scholarly Publishing, 49(1), 53-65. doi: 10.3138/jsp.49.1.53

Waller, Cross and Rigling’s (2017) article centers the relationship between university press and academic library in the scholarly communication ecosystem and how open educational resources (OER) can strengthen these partnerships. The authors go over possible barriers to and benefits of collaboration, citing that open textbooks could be a promising bridge between them. These barriers include: differences between how library and press are evaluated and perceived, differing business models and funding sources, and an underappreciation for the other’s strengths and potential. Collaboration between them can lead to innovation and can potentially reduce costs. These partnerships can remold the scholarly communication system with open textbooks as a “promising area” for collaboration (p. 56). Waller, Cross and Rigling (2017) state that “with their shared academic values, libraries and presses have an opportunity to intervene and reclaim textbooks from the for-profit publishers that have captured the textbook market” (p. 57). This situation ultimately led to North Carolina State University (NCSU) and University of North Carolina (UNC) Press’s Open Textbook Toolkit. This project began with NCSU’s 2013 Alt-Textbook project which provided instructors who replaced commercial textbooks with an OER a grant of between $500 and $2000. Despite its success, one barrier that remained is that there was limited availability of OER resources. To aid in the creation and adoption, they developed the Open Textbook Toolkit to break “down the creation of an open textbook or similar type of OER into simple, flexible, and scalable components” (p. 60). The Toolkit will be tested on the psychology field and was just awarded a research grant by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The research will take place in three phases: “1) a planning and preparation phase; 2) a survey and focus group phase; and 3) an evaluation, reporting, and dissemination phase” (p. 61). The goal is to create a strong library-press partnership via the Toolkit.

            The article centers on the commonalities and differences between academic libraries and university presses and hopes that OER resources will not only address the many financial burdens of depending on a commercial presses but also strengthen collaboration between the libraries and presses. They hope the Open Textbook Toolkit will unify them in a “clear, mission-driven project” (p. 63). The most valid and useful point the article makes is that a unifying project can help strengthen the partnership of academic library and university press. It seems to me that this would alleviate some of the financial burden placed upon the collection and free up some resources for better collection development. The benefits of and barriers to collaboration between library and press are also noteworthy. A downside, though, is that this article seems incomplete without the hard data about how the research of the project is turning out. Another aspect that could improve this article could be about how faculty views OER resources, i.e. what are the benefits and downsides to the shift. I also wanted to know what the specifics behind the Open Textbook Toolkit were and how exactly it supports library, faculty, and university press. Overall, this article could be well-utilized in giving students a perspective of how a project can unite or strengthen the relationship between university library and press, but its lack of specifics about the Toolkit and some faculty impressions about OER would be of more interest and enlightening to the student. It would be a great companion piece to their future research on the Open Textbook Toolkit, when available. Though this article is not technically about collection development, it does give some insight into what some universities are doing to develop and encourage OER collections and utilization of that collection.

Librarians and OER: Cultivating a Community of Practice to be More Effective Advocates

Shana Hay

Smith, Brenda and Lee, Leva. (2015). Librarians and OER: Cultivating a Community of Practice to Be More Effective Advocates, Paper presented at the Distance Library Services Conference, Pittsburgh, PA, April 20, 2016. Vancouver: University of British Columbia. Retrieved from: https://bccampus.ca/files/2016/04/DLS-Conference.pdf 

   This paper discusses how a group of academic librarians working in the province of British Columbia, Canada joined forces to share best practices, ideas and tools with the aim of creating resources to support fellow academic librarians in OER-related interactions. By entering into a community of practice, the BCOER librarians were able to support each other, ensuring no librarian was left feeling overwhelmed in the face of this additional responsibility. The paper also brings up some of the reasons OER development has not been tackled more aggressively in many academic libraries- mainly faculty uncertainty as to the reliability of information obtained through OERs versus traditionally published materials. This paper highlights the role librarians in academic institutions can play in changing this attitude of resistance through promotional campaigns, the development and maintenance of relevant OERs, the provision of long-term, stable access, and by linking OER resources to the OPAC for ease of access and a sense of curation. Some of the interesting events BCOER have sponsored include hackathons and OER awareness events throughout the community. Some of the tools the BCOER librarians have collaborated to develop include an OER Repository Assessment Rubric, and OER advocacy poster for conference use, and BCOER Guides which are LibGuides for OER material sorted by type. 
   This paper did a great job of addressing the various reasons the use and development of OERs has met with resistance, both from the point of view of librarians (who have a tonne to do already) and faculty (who trust traditional texts and require reliability).  By highlighting ways this resistance can be overcome namely through cooperation between librarians and education between librarians and instructors, the authors of this paper make an excellent argument for the increased adoption of OERs in the academic world. By stressing the importance of things such as communication and building relationships across library systems, the BCOER offers a template for other libraries, encouraging them to overcome perceived obstacles and harness the power a of well-maintained network of OERs for their patrons.

Curating, Not Weeding

Haskins, Ashley

Held, Tim. (n.d.). Curating, Not Weeding. Technical Services Quarterly., 35(2), 133-143.

This article draws attention to the fact that many librarians and users are uncomfortable removing any books or cultural artifacts from a collection, (potentially because librarians confuse books with the content they contain) but asks librarians to confront the finite nature of library space. This issue is compounded by the expanding nature of information and the increased services demanded by patrons.

The authors state that users were not impressed by predominantly older results in catalog searches and the dated appearance of the stacks, and recommend building a digital collection of books and OERs to supply knowledge without using library space. However, the same issues of overwhelming users with outdated information and diluting the search for quality resources can exist in online resources as well. The authors do not acknowledge the need to also weed digital collections and OERs, seeming to forget their own advice “For rightsizing, librarians must have a plan, including goals, resources, and ongoing maintenance.” (p. 136)

This article is a good reminder that increased collection numbers don’t correlate to increased use, and can actually overwhelm and discourage patron use. The article concludes that “right sizing” a collection increases usability and provides a thoughtful consideration of weeding policies.

Weeding, OERs, right sizing

Open and Editable: Exploring Library Engagement in OER Adoption, Adaptation and Authoring

 In her article, "Open and Editable: Exploring Library Engagement in Open Educational Resource Adoption, Adaptation and Authoring, author Anita Walz talks about the nature of OER's are and how librarians can adopt and use them for low cost opportunities especially in university and research libraries. Libraries are increasingly asked to do more with less. A common misconception about OER is that since they are free-- they must not be quality materials another is the ability to locate relevant OER's by faculty members. There are many universities including San Jose State, that are using OER's to lower the cost for students buying books.

"Locally, the Virginia Community College System has been very active incentivizing development of free and openly licensed materials for nearly 70 courses. A notable example is Tidewater Community College’s “Z Degree,” which replaces textbooks with OER, resulting in a zero textbook cost degree. While project organizers did not initially partner with the library in development of the Z Degree, this author is pleased to see that the library is now involved, per their detailed OER Research Guide (Walz, 2015)."

 Author Walz delves into why individuals would forego future royalties in order to provide a free service to the public. Listed below are a few examples and rationale.

"A faculty member or teacher employed in an educational institution may choose to openly license and disseminate works for original created works via various repositories or websites. Students and teachers benefit by increased access and ease of making derivatives.

Tesla Motors indicated that they would not enforce their patents for electric car technology in order to spur dissemination and development of electric car technology and production.

The Hewlett Foundation funded the 2001 startup of the MIT OpenCourseWare project, a courseware sharing initiative in line with MIT’s mission “to advance knowledge and educate students (Walz, 2015)."

All of these instances really speak to serving the public through expanded opportunities for learning, business growth and affordability. This was a very inspirational article!! It speaks to the forward thinking and educational desires of company owners, librarians and educators.

Reference:
Walz, A. R. (2015). Open and Editable: Exploring Library Engagement in Open Educational Resource Adoption, Adaptation and Authoring. Virginia Libraries, 61(1), 23-31

OERs and You

Amy Jessica McMillan

INFO 266

March 29, 2016

Valenza, J. (2016, Feb. 28). OER and you: The curation mandate. Neverending search. Retrieved from http://blogs.slj.com/neverendingsearch/2016/02/28/oer-and-you-the-curation-mandate/

Summary: In this short blog post, Valenza gives an overview of #GoOpen, a U.S. Department of Education-endorsed initiative in favor of open education resources, and explains what this means for school librarians. According to OER Commons, "Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching and learning materials that you may freely use and reuse at no cost" (qtd. in Valenza). Valenza challenges librarians to prepare themselves for this movement and to enhance it by curating quality OER collections in our schools. In other words, teacher librarians need to make OERs discoverable, select and curate appropriate resources, promote inquiry using OERs and preexisting purchases, and educate people about Creative Commons.

Evaluation and Analysis: OERs have the potential to make up the majority of our "connections" as school librarians, and possibly for other types of librarians as well. As noted by Valenza, OERs might be the "game changers" or our profession. Through OERs, students might really be able to access multiple perspectives and unlimited content without worrying about textbook biases or payment. I am particularly interested in Amazon Education's initiative to provide teachers with a database in which they can upload, search, and manage educational resources for free. Right now the #GoOpen initiative feels a bit disorganized and overwhelming, but the movement shows no signs of going away. In fact, it seems to be growing In her blog, Valenza writes, "It's our gig," when explaining why OERs need to be curated by librarians. I agree. School librarians can start now by adding OERs to their virtual learning commons and by publishing the best ones to staff and students.

Next Steps: I have already created a short list of OERs relevant to my K-12 school district. Click the link OER Source Page to see what I have so far. If you know of any I missed, please add to the comments below.