3.1 Discovery and Curation

Introduction

This subunit outlines the challenges of searching for OER, opportunities for librarian search expertise to play a role in OER discovery, and some of the most commonly used OER repositories and producers. These topics are especially important to librarians, who can provide specialized help with OER searching.

Faculty often indicate that OER discovery is one of the biggest challenges they face when attempting to use these resources in the classroom. Librarians can help overcome this barrier by using their search skills to find appropriate OER, and by curating the OER that their faculty create so others can find the resources more easily. Just as with any other reference interview, sometimes the first hurdle is determining what the faculty member really needs. See Searching for Open Materials Links to an external site. from Quill West at Pierce College for ideas about how to explore a faculty member's information needs. Also see the video1 below for an overview of the librarian's role in curating OER.

Note: College Libraries Ontario has provided a video transcript (RTF) Links to an external site.. 

OER Producers

There are two main sources for OER:

  1. Producers, which both create and distribute content.
  2. Repositories and referatories, which improve discoverability of OER by bringing them together into one search platform.

Below is a list of several major producers of OER content. 

OpenStax Links to an external site. is a nonprofit organization based out of Rice University that strives to increase student access to educational materials by producing openly licensed textbooks for college and Advanced Placement courses. Thanks in part to funding by the Gates and Hewlett foundations, OpenStax textbooks are among the most commonly used open textbooks across the country and often come with important free ancillary materials for instructors, such as PowerPoint slides and homework answers.

Open SUNY Textbooks Links to an external site. is a publishing initiative through the State University of New York libraries. The project was launched in 2012, and textbook creation is supported by small grants to faculty. The project aims to publish cost-effective, high-quality open resources that can be used by everyone.

BCcampus Links to an external site. is an organization that supports all of the post-secondary institutions of British Columbia in their efforts to improve teaching practices, especially as they relate to open education. The BCcampus Open Textbook Project Links to an external site. has been a leader in supporting the production of open textbooks and other OER through financial support from the Canadian government and the Hewlett Foundation. It also provides a useful search tool Links to an external site. for hundreds of open textbooks and links to available ancillary resources, faculty reviews, and editable files.

LibreTexts Links to an external site. is a California-based project supported by $5 million from the Department of Education Open Textbook Pilot Project. Its "Explore the Libraries" tab features OER in a range of subjects plus workforce materials. Ancillary materials vary by subject but include laboratory experiments, case studies, visualizations and simulations, demonstrations and techniques, and interactive fossils Links to an external site..

Saylor Academy Links to an external site. is a nonprofit organization that assembles freely available courses using open content. The foundation currently offers nearly 100 free, college-level courses Links to an external site., each of which is peer reviewed by faculty for accuracy and quality. When OER aren't available for a course being developed, Saylor Academy funds the creation of new, openly licensed materials in collaboration with faculty experts.

OER Repositories and Referatories

One of the major challenges that faculty face when attempting to adopt or adapt an open textbook is finding relevant, appropriate material to use. Librarians can be valuable aids in this task, but it can still be difficult to find OER that fit the bill. OER repositories (which store OER) and referatories (which link out to OER on various platforms) improve the findability of OER, whether they're created by one of the publishers listed above, produced by an individual faculty member, or consist of public domain material.

The Open Textbook Library is a referatory of open textbooks that are, in many cases, reviewed by faculty. The library is a resource maintained by the Open Textbook Network. The Open Textbook Library is one of the most comprehensive collections of open textbooks, featuring more than 690 titles.

Developed by the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME), OER Commons Links to an external site. was launched in 2007 to serve as both a digital library of OER and a collaboration platform. OER Commons allows for easy discovery of OER, as well as their modification within the same platform. This is also an easy-to-use platform for faculty who are looking to create OER (see help pages for OER Commons' Open Author tool Links to an external site. and how to remix a resource Links to an external site.). OER Commons also offers microsites Links to an external site. that can be customized for your organization.

A new Creative Commons search tool, CC Search (Links to an external site.), focuses on images. The old search tool (Links to an external site.) isn't a search engine itself, but it provides easy access to many of the search platforms that include CC-licensed materials. The limiters in both tools allow you to restrict your search to only items with certain permissions (based on the CC license assigned to them). The old search tool can be useful for finding images, videos, music, and other openly licensed content.

Developed by George Mason University and the Mason Publishing Group, the Mason OER Metafinder Links to an external site.doesn't provide a single database for searching OER, but instead performs your search simultaneously across 21 sources of OER material. This federated search can increase discovery and prevents the need for updating a centralized database. The tool can be very useful for helping a faculty member who is looking for OER in a niche area of study or who has had difficulty searching in several of the major repositories.

Openly Available Sources Integrated Search (OASIS) Links to an external site., developed by SUNY Geneseo, is a search platform that aims to make discovery of open content easier. OASIS currently searches open content from 98 different sources and contains more than 368,000 records. Users can browse OASIS by subject Links to an external site. or by material types such as textbooks, audiobooks, videos, and interactive simulations. You can easily add an OASIS search widget Links to an external site. to your website or research guide (scroll down to "Search Widget Code").

Others: 

Many other OER repositories exist and are being developed as librarians attempt to overcome the challenge of findability for faculty. Please feel free to share your own favorite OER repositories in this week's discussion! Below are a few more to be aware of:

Challenges and Opportunities

While the open education movement has come a long way in the past couple of decades, there are still some significant challenges that librarians and other open education advocates face. Some of the challenges require discovery and curation expertise, and they open up opportunities for librarians to contribute to the open education movement. 

  • Searching Challenges: Librarians have an opportunity to help faculty find OER using their own searching skills. We can also provide faculty with tools such as research guides that make finding OER easier (see below for a list of research guide examples). Keeping track of the many OER producers and repositories as much as possible can be an important way of supporting faculty as they explore OER alternatives. Our awareness of primary source material, especially in the public domain, can also be useful.
  • Diversity of Creation Methods and Hosting Locations: Because the creation of OER is scattered across a wide variety of institutions, publishing initiatives, and platforms, it can be difficult to find OER, and their presentation may not be consistent. As librarians, we can help by sharing faculty OER from our own institutions with major repositories so that they can be found, and so their appearance can be more consistent for faculty and students. Many librarians also choose to create research guides that help faculty and students at their institutions find OER for their subject areas. Below are some examples of OER research guides created by librarians:
  • Metadata: OER aren't useful to anyone if they can't be found and used. Librarians can provide important expertise to address this challenge by assigning robust metadata to OER. When helping faculty create, publish, and share OER, librarians can provide relevant keywords, abstracts, and other information to make the content more findable. Some platforms improve discovery through metadata and cataloging practices; for example, the Open Textbook Network provides MARC records for all of the Open Textbook Library holdings so librarians can add the books to their catalogs.
  • Evaluating OER: As librarians, we may work with faculty from a variety of disciplines in their search for OER. Frequently, we don't have the expertise to speak with authority about the quality of the OER we're finding for faculty when it comes to content. However, we can still do some initial evaluation of OER before sending them along to faculty. We can save a faculty member time if we prescreen OER, considering the standards of production, accessibility of the content, the appropriateness of the license for the intended use, and how well the OER fit the faculty member's purpose before sending the OER along. The CARE Framework Links to an external site. can also serve as a guide for librarians and faculty as they determine whether an OER provider or producer is working for the best interests of the open education community. Keep in mind that this framework is relatively new and is still being discussed and evaluated by members of the community.
  • Read "The Truth (About OER) Is Out There Links to an external site." by Mark Lieberman for a more in-depth exploration of challenges that faculty face with OER.

Optional Readings

Footnotes

1. "The Critical Role of Librarians in OER Adoption Links to an external site." by CCCOER is licensed under CC BY 4.0 Links to an external site..

Next

Now that you've learned about challenges of searching for OER, opportunities for librarian search expertise to play a role in OER discovery, and some of the most commonly used OER repositories and producers, go on to test your understanding with a self test by selecting the Next button below.