Tuesday, May 22, 1:15-2:15pm
Room: Ski-U-Mah Room
Presenters: Karen Lauritsen, Open Textbook Network; Beth Bernhardt and Anna Craft, UNC Greensboro; Karen Bjork, Portland State University; Corinne Guimont and Anita Walz, Virginia Tech; Amanda Larson, Penn State University ; Carla Myers, Miami University
Description: Open only works if there are open materials to use and ways to produce them. Due to growing interest in supporting faculty authors, the Open Textbook Network recently launched The Publishing Cooperative with nine partner libraries. Our goal is to grow open textbook publishing expertise in higher education, and increase the availability of open textbooks for use by instructors and students around the world.
The Publishing Cooperative establishes publishing infrastructure, processes, community, and technical support to expand open textbook publishing in higher education. The founding member cohort benefits from shared professional development, while also paving the way for future professionals. Together they will publish two dozen new textbooks with a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license by 2020, giving future users maximum freedom to adapt the work to meet their local student needs.
In this presentation, a panel of founding members will discuss why they joined the Co-op, and summarize its origins, purpose, and progress thus far, including challenges, surprises, and plans for collaboration and implementation at their individual institutions. They will also discuss methods for overcoming open textbook publishing challenges, including continuity of resources, technology issues, sustainability of materials, and addressing equity, diversity, and inclusion. Many founding members joined in order to address challenges they’ve experienced in establishing an open textbook publishing program and meeting author expectations without prior press work experience.