Forum Info

March 26, 2025

Individual Session: May 8, 4:00-5:00

Day/time: May 8, 2025, 4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. EDT

Title: Expanding Library Publishing Services Beyond Campus: Engaging the Greater Community Through Library Publishing

Presenter: Kyle Morgan (he/him), Scholarly Communications and Digital Scholarship Librarian, Cal Poly Humboldt

Description: As universities have acknowledged their educational responsibilities beyond their campus borders, academic libraries have engaged the cause in a variety of ways. This presentation on the efforts of The Press at Cal Poly Humboldt details how opening library publishing services to the community has become one of the more effective outreach engagements in the library, all the while fostering student voices and skill development, advancing social and environmental justice issues, stoking fundraising, and broadening the university’s community integration and impact.

Title: Entangling Stories to Organize Digital Scholarship: Creating Generative, Community-Engaged Workflows

Presenters:

• Mariam Ismail (she/they), Digital Projects Coordinator, Virginia Tech University Libraries
• Jason Higgins (he/him), Digital Scholarship Coordinator, Virginia Tech University Libraries

Description: Digital humanities projects aim to bring together diverse stories, media, and knowledge. The support we often provide as practitioners is helping partners weave these elements together. This involves breaking things down, a deconstruction of the very smallest elements to aid in reconstruction of complex stories and collective narratives. This reconstructionist approach is rooted in social justice, ethical stewardship, and intersectional critical perspectives — with/in the various parts unfolds a more complete story. It is also firmly grounded in collaborative relationships with communities. Partners help us gather fragments and reorganize them into digital narratives, and the generative DH workflows enable us to brainstorm, interact, and envision possibilities. By sharing authority at every stage — the identification of research questions, thematic focuses, vetting and peer-review, project design, access, and preservation — we are fostering a culture in which partners contribute at critical stages of knowledge production and thereby participants see parts of their own lived experiences represented and feel pride towards their contributions. This process also creates replicable documentation throughout the steps of creation rather than treating digital preservation as an afterthought.

This proposal explores the implementation of this workflow for a DH project that navigates the potential mental health effects of learning about historical and ongoing racial trauma. In collaboration with the More Than a Fraction Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting education, research, and networks on the legacies of slavery and descendants of enslaved people in the United States, we have been collecting oral history interviews and creating a DH project that seeks to raise awareness of intergenerational trauma, records the collective memories of families of descendants, and advances new understandings of racial trauma. Also central to this process is an educational component that includes and immerses students in the experience of creation, allowing communities to share wisdom with young people and students to engage in experiential learning beyond classrooms and into communities.

Title: From Locality to Decoloniality? The Role of Perpusnas Press in Knowledge Sovereignty in Indonesia

Presenter: Zaki Fathurohman, Information System Analyst, National Library of Indonesia

Description:The disclosure of local knowledge is often mentioned as one approach to decolonization. Indonesia, as an archipelago with diverse ethnic groups spanning both land and sea,  covering an area two-thirds the size of Europe, is believed to possess its own wealth of knowledge. Since its establishment in 2019, Perpusnas Press, the publishing arm of the National Library of Indonesia (Perpusnas RI), has published nearly 1,000 book titles on its website. In addition to publishing ancient manuscripts, it has also released books that emphasize local themes. Beyond waiting at the downstream, Perpusnas RI actively organizes writing activities across various regions of the country, contributing to efforts to equalize literacy development in a nation as vast as Indonesia.

The question then arises: is the disclosure of locality part of a conscious decolonization effort? How does the discourse of decolonization appear in the publications, both written and audiovisual, managed by Perpusnas RI? Understanding the state of library publishing in a country that experienced colonization by the Portuguese, British, Dutch, and Japanese provides valuable context for assessing the role of Perpusnas Press in advancing knowledge sovereignty. Through an analysis of interviews, news websites, journal websites, and Perpusnas RI’s YouTube channel, it is revealed that the explicit decolonization discourse is still emerging. However, the access provided to ancient manuscripts through preservation by Perpusnas RI has proven to open avenues for researchers to conduct studies related to decolonization, particularly in understanding how historical texts illuminate the anti-colonial stance of national heroes.

This is exemplified by Arif (2024), who examined the biography and bibliography of Sheikh Yusuf Makassar, an anti-colonial figure who journeyed from Indonesia to South Africa and served as an inspiration for Nelson Mandela. Several books about Sheikh Yusuf Makassar have also been published by Perpusnas Press, highlighting the richness of content about local wisdom in Indonesia. Amid the potential gap between content on locality and the awareness of a decolonization agenda, there is evident potential for Perpusnas Press to optimize its role in knowledge sovereignty through synergy and collaboration with various partners.

March 26, 2025

BOAF Session: Inclusive Working: Teams in Library Publication

Day/time: May 8, 2025, 4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. EDT

Title: Inclusive Working: Teams in Library Publication

Cap: 50 attendees

Presenters: 

• Dr. Linda Miles (she/her), Open Educational Resources Librarian, Michigan State University Libraries
• Dr. Rajiv Ranjan (he/him), Associate Professor, Michigan State University, Department of Linguistics, Languages, and Cultures

Description: The topic for this discussion emerged from the intensive teamwork approach to creation and support for Open Educational Resources at MSU, but it is also highly relevant to other publication contexts.The session will begin as we collaborate to develop a working definition of some framing concepts and set expectations for each other and our work together. Among the team-related concepts to be introduced, we will discuss the idea of “inclusive teaming,” an approach to teamwork that relies on specific strategies to counteract intrinsic bias and draw out diverse perspectives.

Participants will rate their level of experience working in well-functioning teams on a simple scale, and this information will be used to constitute breakout groups that include both teamwork veterans and relative novices. We will be considering application of strategies within publishing teams, specifically, although participants’ teamwork experiences from other varied contexts will of course enrich the discussion. Prompts will be designed to encourage both questions and responses from participants, further encouraging productive and diverse cross-pollination.

Together participants will explore team culture, with some discussion prompts related to very practical concerns such as communication, engagement & empowerment, social motivation, and shared decision-making. We will also touch on self-knowledge and the arts of leadership, followership, and more fluid collaboration. There will be a general focus on best practices to address shared challenges and concrete strategies for moving toward an inclusive and empowered model of teamwork.

March 26, 2025

Individual Session: May 8, 2:45-3:45

Day/time: May 8, 2025, 2:45 p.m. to 3:45 p.m. EDT

Title: Enhancing Discoverability of OER: Promoting Collaborative Repository Workflows

Presenters:

• Xiao Zeng (she/her), Open Publishing Librarian, University Libraries, University of Houston
• Kate McNally Carter (she/her), Open Education Librarian, University of Houston
• Ariana Santiago (she/her), Head of Open Education Services, University of Houston

Description: Depositing open educational resources (OER) in repositories is essential for promoting the discovery of course materials with the broader educational community. At the University of Houston, we have developed a workflow that formalizes our process for depositing OER into our institutional repository, ensuring our materials are archived consistently and discoverable by our community. However, taking this a step further by depositing materials in major OER repositories and referatories—where many open education advocates are actually looking for OER materials—has been an ongoing objective for us. The purpose of this presentation is to share our workflow for depositing materials in the institutional repository, and to discuss challenges and best practices for depositing materials in various OER repositories and referatories. Specifically, we will address the challenge of ownership in maintaining accurate and current records for our faculty- and student-created materials; should this process be led by the Libraries, the faculty creators themselves, or should this be collaboratively driven by both? We will discuss how this consideration is informing our planned approach for sharing our OER materials.

Title: Leveraging Technology and Bite-Sized Projects to Drive OER Adoption

Presenters:

• Yassin Nacer (he/him), Open Education Librarian, Utah State University
• Kirsten Cox (she/her), Digital Scholarship Librarian, Utah State University

Description: Creating Open Educational Resources can feel like a daunting task for faculty, especially when it comes to developing large-scale resources such as textbooks. To address these concerns, our library developed a targeted workshop for faculty at our university, focusing on two key strategies: leveraging technology to ensure OER are accessible and encouraging the conversion of smaller, already existing resources, such as assignments, lesson plans, and student projects, into OER. These approaches not only make the creation of OER more accessible but also help lower the barriers to entry, fostering broader faculty engagement.

In this session, librarians will explore how to leverage campus technology and develop effective outreach strategies to support the creation of accessible Open Educational Resources (OER). By focusing on small-scale projects, such as assignments, lesson plans, and student-created works, attendees will learn how to encourage faculty to contribute to the growing OER movement, lowering barriers to creation and increasing access to educational materials.

The session will also emphasize the importance of accessibility in OER creation, focusing on how librarians can support faculty in making OER materials usable by all learners, including students with disabilities. By the end of the session, attendees will have actionable strategies for using technology to support OER creation and promoting small-scale OER projects that lower barriers to participation and enhance access to learning materials for diverse student populations.

Title: OA Math Textbook Publication with LaTeX

Presenter: Cale Erwin (he/him), Scholarly Communications Associate, Butler University

Description: This individual presentation provides an overview of aiding in publishing an open-access textbook, Linear Transformations on Vector Spaces that began in 2021 and ended in 2023. The presentation provides an overview of the project and documents the successes and challenges of publishing an open-access mathematics textbook in LaTeX. LaTeX is an open-source typesetting system commonly used to produce scientific and technical documents. LaTeX is widely used in mathematics, physics, computer science, and engineering due to its unique capability to present complex mathematical equations, symbols, and notations using a specific markup language. The book’s publication is part of a larger effort by the Private Academic Library Network of Indiana (PALNI) consortium and their publishing platform, PALNI Open Press, to further the mission of expanding open-access resources for affiliated institution’s faculty. Because of this unique relationship between PALNI, this presentation also touches on the importance of the librarian’s role in facilitating collaborative academic publishing. Furthermore, librarians and professional staff act as project managers, aiding authors by managing workflows and ensuring compliance with accessibility standards to navigate copyright considerations and dissemination strategies. In this role, the librarian becomes central in coordinating the technical and administrative dimensions of the publication process.

March 26, 2025

BOAF Session: So you’re new to library publishing… Me too!

Day/time: May 8, 2025, 2:45 p.m. to 3:45 p.m. EDT

Title: So you’re new to library publishing… Me too!

Presenter: Rachel Molina (she/her), Digital Publishing and Repository Librarian, Indiana University Indianapolis

Directory: I am a recent graduate just starting not only my first library publishing job, but my first library job in general. It can be daunting looking at the laundry list of responsibilities, conferences, presentations, reviews, and more that are required of someone new to the field. Library publishing has so many moving parts that it feels like climbing up a mountain just trying to keep up with my colleagues. I am confident that I am not the only one in this situation, and believe it would be beneficial to connect with other new librarians and share our thoughts as we jump into the deep end of library publishing with fresh degrees and little experience. What are the things we all anticipate about working in library publishing, and how do our preconceptions differ from the reality of the job? What challenges have come to light since beginning this career? Are there things we wish our colleagues understood about being new in library publishing, and how could they help us catch up? In this Birds of a Feather session, breakout groups can be organized based on the following factors: current students or recent graduates brand new to librarianship; established librarians who have recently moved into library publishing positions; attendees who are new to the Library Publishing Forum; and people who would like to support new colleagues. The goal of this discussion is to make connections with others who are facing similar circumstances so that we may all learn and grow together. Additionally, this discussion allows for new librarians to share their struggles, triumphs, and pass along advice on how to work through the problems and challenges of being new in this field.

March 26, 2025

Active Session: The Future of the Library Publishing Directory: Looking Backward and Forward

Day/time: May 8, 2025, 1:15 p.m. to 2:15 p.m. EDT

Title: The Future of the Library Publishing Directory: Looking Backward and Forward

Presenters:

• Allison Brown (she/her), Digital Publishing Services Manager, SUNY Geneseo
• Angel Clemons (she/her), Electronic Resources Librarian, University of Louisville
• Briana Knox (they/them), User Services Librarian, University of North Texas
• Gina Genova (she/her), University of Louisville, Clinical Librarian
• Matt Vaughn (he/him), Indiana University, Open Publishing Librarian

Description: Current members of the Library Publishing Directory Committee will engage with the community to discuss the path the Directory has taken and possible directions for the future. We will present findings from the 2024 Directory survey analysis, including highlights from the retrospective data analysis of all 11 years of Directory data. We will focus on how the Directory has expanded over the past decade, the growing role open access and open source platforms have played in library publishing, and other trends within the library publishing space.

We will also discuss planned changes to the 2026 Directory survey, from question and section changes, to the important transition to conducting the survey every other year rather than annually. We will then engage participants through collective brainstorming and annotation to provide feedback on survey design and the survey-taking experience, such as the process of filling out the survey, how organizations manage which staff members respond to the survey, question topics and response options that may be missing, and survey accessibility. Participants will be able to contribute feedback and ideas through several means, including open discussion, annotation of the current survey document, and written brainstorming. Participants’ insights will be used to improve the redesign of the Library Publishing Directory survey to more accurately reflect library publishers’ experiences and priorities in the Directory.

March 25, 2025

Individual Session: May 8, 1:15-2:15

Day/time: May 8, 2025, 1:15 p.m. to 2:15 p.m. EDT

Title: An International Data Space for OA Book Usage Data Exchange Across Public and Private Stakeholders – Project Update

Presenter: Ursula Rabar, Community Manager, OA Book Usage Data Trust / OPERAS

Description: While different interfaces have made it easier for libraries, publishers, policymakers, and information services to access, use and innovate with usage and metadata at scale, time and human resources are still required to manage, compile, and link open access book usage data metrics coming from multiple platforms in multiple formats.

In 2022, the Mellon Foundation awarded a project team led by the University of North Texas, OpenAIRE, and OPERAS to develop “governance building blocks” for the Open Access Book Usage Data Trust in line with both the Principles of Open Infrastructure and protocols emerging from the Design Principles for International Data Spaces. Over more than two years, stakeholders leveraged in-depth community consultations to produce a rulebook to guide participation in the data space community, define Data Trust membership benefits, and get feedback on cost-recovery and functional requirements. In 2024, the Data Trust’s Technical Advisory Committee and Board of Trustees selected an experienced international data spaces technical team to build out the technical infrastructure. Using a staged development approach focused on “scaling small”, a limited proof of concept focused on the exchange of COUNTER item-level views and downloads data was developed and tested with a first group of partners (JSTOR, LibLynx, Michigan University Publishing, Punctum Books, Knowledge Unlatched) with plans to extend data space security and auditing functionality to support additional data exchange use cases in the future.

Title: Collaborate with Creative Commons: open licensing training for all

Presenter: Jennryn Wetzler (she/her), Director of Learning and Training, Creative Commons

Description: Want to collaborate with Creative Commons on open licensing training? We are open!

Through the CC Certificate program, Creative Commons (CC)* invests in a world where everyone has the legal tools to share their knowledge freely, expanding global learning. It is a global professional development program training librarians, educators and cultural heritage professionals in copyright, open licensing and open access efforts.

Now in our seventh year, we have approximately 2000 alumni in 68 countries, and course content in 10 languages. Through initial partnerships, we’ve subsidized CC Certificate training for hundreds of participants, provided customized workshops, and co-created the University of Nebraska Omaha’s microcredential Introduction to Open Educational Resources, and Library Juice Academy’s Creative Commons Licenses and Copyright: From Concepts to Practice.

Now, we aim to expand open licensing learning to meet the needs of new audiences at libraries and academic institutions. Join this session and help us explore what we can create together to better meet your community’s needs!

This session will entail a brief overview from Creative Commons.

*CC is a global nonprofit organization dedicated to helping build and sustain a thriving commons of shared knowledge and culture with the global standard of open licenses. We built and steward the open licenses that power millions of people’s unfettered access to culture, research, information, education and more. There are over 2.5 billion CC licenses being used across 9 million websites.

March 25, 2025

Active Session: Defining Quality in OER Textbooks: Drafting a Guide

Day/time: May 7, 2025, 2:45 p.m. to 3:45 p.m. EDT

Title: Defining Quality in OER Textbooks: Drafting a Guide

Presenters:

• Stefanie Buck (she/her), Director, Open Educational Resources, Oregon State University
• Karen Lauritsen (she/her), Senior Director, Publishing, Open Education Network

Description: Although the adoption of open textbooks is increasing, some faculty still hesitate to switch to Open Educational Resources (OER), often due to concerns about quality. Defining and creating “quality” OER is challenging, as it is inherently subjective and varies between creators and their supporters. This situation mirrors the early skepticism surrounding online learning, where faculty questioned its quality compared to face-to-face instruction. This led to the development of the Quality Matters (QM) standards, a nationally recognized rubric designed to assess online courses based on their structure and design rather than content alone. These standards, which include guidelines on learning objectives, assessments, instructional materials, and more, were later adapted into an “Essentials Guide” for faculty at Oregon State University.

Building on the idea behind QM’s Essentials Guide, we are drafting an OER Essentials document, which will serve as a guide for OER creators in developing quality open textbooks. This document will not evaluate the content completeness but will provide a framework for authors and their supporters to enhance textbook quality. The categories covered include comprehensiveness, content accuracy, clarity, modularity, organization, accessibility, cultural relevance, and media integration.

In this session, we will present a draft of the OER Essentials document (at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DpYwnUFiKr4JYD4-oQUQhsrJhBarcB5CJmkC1AVe8xU/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.xi0yifgsjjlf) and invite feedback through small group discussions and interactive tools. Our aim is to develop a dynamic, collaborative guide that evolves based on feedback. By the end of the session, we hope to refine this resource to better support OER creators, ensuring it becomes a valuable, shared tool in the ongoing development of high-quality open textbooks.

March 25, 2025

Individual Session: May 7, 2:45-3:45

Day/time: May 7, 2025, 2:45 p.m. to 3:45 p.m. EDT

Title: Brazilian Institute of Information on Science and Technology (Ibict)

Presenters:

• Lucas dos Santos Souza da Silva (he/him), Post-Graduate Student/Researcher, Brazilian Institute of Information on Science and Technology (Ibict)
• Fabio Gouveia (he/him), Professor, Brazilian Institute of Information on Science and Technology (Ibict)
• Nanci Oddone (she/her), Professor, Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO)

Description: In recent decades, Brazilian academic libraries have been envisioning opportunities in a new digital context for academic publishing, therefore they’ve been carrying out a variety of practices to support services for their community, among them, the creation, editing and dissemination of publishing projects in their campus. This presentation aims to expose the perspectives of academic librarians engaged with library publishing services in Brazil, among planning, provision of these editorial services, and training. It shows that the tendency is for unawareness about this field among Brazilian academic librarians, even though there are practices being carried out and blooming in more recent years. Characterized by isolated practices that are not yet integrated into international discussions, this presentation intends to recommend the development of a community of practice in Brazil for Library Publishing, in other to share the knowledge and experiences on scholarly publishing as part of the professional duties of academic libraries, provide training in editorial services and management of library publishing initiatives for Brazilian academic libraries staffs. At last, aims to discuss the opportunity to include Brazil into the international Library Publishing landscape, promoting the widespread dissemination of the actions undertaken by academics libraries in the global south, benefiting an open, inclusive, and sustainable scientific communication system in the region.

Title: Stronger Together at the Big Ten: Library Publishing Collective Action

Presenters:

• Kate McCready (she/her), Program Director for Open Publishing, Big Ten Academic Alliance
• Ally Laird, Open Publishing Team Lead, Penn State University
• Matt Vaughn, Open Publishing Librarian, Indiana University

Description: Tasked with serving extremely large populations, with limited resources and little chance of realizing increased capacities, the Big Ten Academic Alliance libraries are realizing opportunities to work together through collective action. With a goal of strengthening our work, and expanding our capacity, the library publishers of the Big Ten Academic Alliance have aligned our resources in order to build a cooperative, aggregated collection of BTAA-published works on the Next Generation Library Publishing’s Meru platform. The short term goal of this project is to evaluate Meru’s capacity to support the display of a variety of publication types, regardless of the platform they were created on. The longer term goals are to determine Meru’s capacity to produce metadata for all publications (or selected publications) for use in discovery systems and preservation systems, and to identify options for the Alliance to work at scale.

At this presentation, members of the project team will share information about the functionality of Meru and the process used to ingest content from Janeway, OJS, DSpace, and Pressbooks into a unified, structured display layer. The interactive, community engaged process used to identify the common product requirements, and to evaluate the implemented multi-publisher display platform will also be explored. We will also outline our efforts to assess the potential for reusing the newly compiled, aggregated publication data for discovery (via third party vendors such as ExLibris, EBSCO, and OAPEN), preservation (via third party vendors, Portico and CLOCKSS), and accessibility testing. These activities will be shared within the context of the challenges and opportunities present when bringing together disparate programs; We aim to identify our differences in order to strengthen all our publishing programs and see what synergy comes from working together.

March 25, 2025

Individual Session: May 7, 1:15-2:15

Day/time: May 7, 2025, 1:15 p.m. to 2:15 p.m. EDT

Title: “Reasonable costs” for publishing: what do we know now, and what can library publishers help us find out?

Presenter: Lauren B. Collister (they, she), Research Engagement Manager, Invest in Open Infrastructure

Description: In 2024, Invest in Open Infrastructure conducted a study focusing on “reasonable costs” for public access to the outputs of federally-funded research in the United States. This study was prompted by the guidance in the 2022 US Office of Science and Technology Policy Memorandum on Ensuring Free, Immediate and Equitable Access to Federally Funded Research, commonly referred to as the “Nelson Memo”, and the policies being implemented as a result. This work was supported by a 2023 grant from the US National Science Foundation (#2330827).

In this presentation, we share some of the significant findings from this study. One of the key distinctions we’ve made is that we need agreement on better language to describe two crucial aspects of providing public access to publications and research data: cost and price. “Cost” refers to the expenses incurred in the course of providing public access to research outputs, or the resources used to produce, deliver, and maintain a research output online. “Price,” on the other hand, is the charges paid by stakeholders in the market exchange for the service of providing public access to a research output. These two terms are often conflated in publishing literature (Steinhart & Skinner, 2024).

While information about the factors of cost and price for publishing research from publishers is becoming more common, the information shared is not cohesive and, therefore, difficult to generalize. In particular, specific cost information is not shared, and pricing schemes lack transparency. This knowledge gap provides an opportunity for library publishers. The work of libraries and other institutional publishers can significantly contribute to a more complete and balanced understanding of what constitutes a “reasonable” model for providing public access. We will share an overview of what we know so far and present ways that library publishers can influence this field to improve understanding. This presentation will also describe how this work is related to recent changes in US federal funding policy.

Title: The Harvard Open Journals Program: A New Library Initiative to Support No-Fee Open Access Journals

Presenters:

• Colleen Cressman (she/her), Librarian for Open Publishing, Harvard Library
• Yuan Li (she/her), University Scholarly Communication Officer and Director of Open Scholarship and Research Data Services, Harvard Library

Description: The Harvard Open Journals Program (HOJP) is a new Harvard Library-based initiative that aims to advance the equitable and sustainable publication of open access (OA) journals at no cost to readers seeking access and no cost to authors seeking to publish. Comprising two models, HOJP provides guidance, resources, and funding for developing and stabilizing no-fee OA journals. With the Academic Press Model, we work with Harvard faculty and researchers and not-for-profit academic presses to furnish operational costs for the short-term, while collaborating with partner organizations to establish community-supported funding mechanisms for the long-term. Still in the early stages of development, the Repository Overlay Model seeks to leverage open infrastructure throughout the publishing lifecycle to support repository-hosted, or ‘overlay,’ OA journals. In this presentation, we will discuss HOJP from conception and planning to development and launch. We will cover the motivating factors that led us to create the program and its constituent models; the importance of collaboration and fostering partnerships; lessons learned and present challenges; and our current and next steps as we continue to build and strengthen the program.

Title: On Building Transgeographic Teaching Networks: The Digital Library of the Caribbean Open Educational Resources in Caribbean Studies Development Program

Presenter: Tania Ríos Marrero (she/her), Project Coordinator for the Digital Library of the Caribbean, University of Florida

Description: The Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC, www.dloc.com) is a collaborative international digital library that preserves and provides open access to cultural, historical, scientific, and research materials from and about the Caribbean. Established in 2004, dLOC consists of over ninety partner institutions that contribute collections and share governance over the organization. More than a digital repository alone, dLOC serves both as a hub for teaching and research initiatives and as an international network of partners, scholars, educators, students, and broader publics.

The Revitalizing the Digital Library of the Caribbean initiative (2022-2026) is a project supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to build, strengthen and sustain the dLOC organization and community. This initiative prominently features a OER stipend program (https://dloc.domains.uflib.ufl.edu/teaching-resources/) to support the development of open educational resources (OER) in Caribbean studies.

This presentation will be facilitated by the team member responsible for designing and implementing the dLOC OER program at the University of Florida. It will include a broad overview of the grant initiative and a discussion of the OER program including summary, goals, timeline, resources, metrics for success, outreach, review and selection, and publishing. The session will discuss accomplishments as well as challenges and lessons learned as the program enters its third year of operation. In particular, it will emphasize community engagement and collaboration across geographic and linguistic boundaries as central to the program’s development and the production of OER in Caribbean studies.

March 25, 2025

Active Session: Challenges & Opportunities – GenAI & Open Educational Resources

Day/time: May 7, 2025, 1:15 p.m. to 2:15 p.m.

Title: Challenges & Opportunities – GenAI & Open Educational Resources

Presenters:

• Erin Fields (she/her), Open Education and Scholarly Communications Librarian, University of British Columbia
• Will Engle (he, him) Open Education Stategist, University of British Columbia

Description: The introduction of GenAI will have a large impact on teaching and learning in higher education. For open educational practices, including creating and sharing open educational resources and open pedagogy in the classroom, the impacts are already being felt. This session will provide an overview, including examples, of how OER is being impacted by GenAI.

Additionally, the session will discuss the potential of AI in generating dynamic content, including interactive textbooks, and its potential in developing open educational resources and practices. We will also engage in discussions about the legal and ethical considerations of both AI and open education including copyright, privacy, and open licensing. In this workshop we’ll dive into practical exercises, including the co-creation of a textbook chapter, demonstrating the real-world application of AI in OER.