Searching for OER: Making your Open Educational Resources Discoverable

Is it possible to utilize your library’s catalog to identify Open Educational Resources (OER)? In Fall 2019, the Weinberg Memorial Library at the University of Scranton piloted their first Open Educational Resources initiative, introducing faculty and students to OER with the goal of replacing traditional textbooks with OER in select courses. To fulfill this goal, the Library faculty and administration explored existing OER resources and determined how to promote and reward a stipend-granting initiative to teaching faculty at the University. This required close collaboration between the Technical Services department and the Research & Instruction Librarians. Participants will learn how the University of Scranton is leveraging its online catalog to improve the ability for faculty, staff, and students to locate OER resources within the current collection through the use of local notes and tags. Discussion will include the process of marketing OER and the use of library resources to the campus community, researching options of different resource types to be utilized in the classroom (Open Textbooks, Open Access, DRM-free, and licensed content), organizing existing resources found on the internet, as well as the challenges associated with identifying resources in the Library’s current collection.