Collection Creation as Collection Management: Libraries as Publishers and Implications for Collection Development

Corley, Jennifer

Gwynn, D., Henry, T., & Craft, A.R., (2019). Collection Creation as Collection Management: Libraries as Publishers and Implications for Collection Development. Collection Management, 44(2-4), 206-220.

In this article, Gwynn, Henry, and Craft examine the activities at the University of North Carolina - Greensboro's library in creating open education resources, establishing digital archives, publishing journals and acting as an institutional repository for collaborative scholarly projects. The authors contend that by creating content and facilitating the publication of digital items that libraries are acting as outlets for spreading scholarly content and creating their own collections as needed by their community. The article also examines how the addition of metadata from the library leads to improved access for users and supports the dissemination of published information.

While the article claims to examine libraries acting as publishers across the spectrum of academic libraries, the authors mainly focused on UNC Greensboro, an institution which is not necessarily representative of the majority of academic libraries in the nation, as the university itself has over 1,000 faculty members and much more financial support in the terms of digital infrastructure and full-time staffing for their digital publication initiative. The primary challenge for other universities and college libraries to act as a publisher of open educational resources, open textbooks, and digital journals will be both funding and staffing. As current technology and digital resources allow for libraries to find more and more open resources to meet the needs of their patrons, being a publisher will become a more viable option for academic libraries seeking to enhance their collection.

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.

OERs as a Social Platform

Peretiako-Soto, Alexandria

Cohen, A., Reisman, S.l, & Sperling, B. B. (1 October 2015). Personal spaces 
in public repositories as a facilitator for open educational resource usage.  
International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 16(4), 
156-176.

Summary: 

OERs are offering many benefits to educators and students as they allow for free
access to many resources. Learning object repositories are a popular means of 
sharing OERs as well as storing them and accessing them. A study was done on 
OER user behaviors such as use, commenting, learning exercises used for, and 
content building materials. Both OER collections and users are growing over time 
showing that they are becoming increasingly important and popular. There are 6 
types of contributors to the OERs studied: teachers, librarians, admins, faculty, 
students, and other. Faculty members were markedly high in uploading content as 
well as submitting learning exercises. OER repositories show high rates of reuse 
of materials, with almost 30% of content being reused. The ability for personal 
expression among repository users would be beneficial. Many repositories require
member status to upload, edit, or comment on resources, but allow anyone to view 
them.

Evaluation:

This article was very interesting as it discussed not only the relevance and benefits 
of OERs, but also the social aspect of OERs. For instance, who is uploading content? 
Who is viewing it? Are people starting educational discussions amongst each other in 
the comments? Who is allowed to comment? As someone who is fairly new to the 
world of OERs, I was not aware that there were platforms used where content users 
and generators could interact with one another.

Open Educational Resources

Denise Lester

 Mallon, M. (2015). Open educational resources doi: 10.1080/15228959.2015.1095671

The author explains Open Educational Resources, (OERs) as a viable strategy model for academic libraries to share and disseminate information; but more importantly the author encourages librarians to be leaders in the use of OERs and not to become overwhelmed with the growing repositories.  The author provides a list of five OER websites and a personal survey/review of each site by the author, all of which can be used by both public and academic librarians due to their mutual interest in content such as textbooks and scholarly articles.