Creative Communities - BC Library Conference 2015

We’ve all read or heard the stories  - “Libraries cancel large academic journal packages due to price increases”. “Students muster to demand Open Textbook options across Canadian Universities”. “Scholarly publishing revolution breakthroughs!” Never before has the Open Education movement been more important in academia. Local institutions are beginning to devote more resources towards it, yet the advocacy role that libraries and librarians can play is still unclear to many.  Join members of the BCOER (British Columbia Open Educational Resources) and a BC Open Textbook Faculty Fellow as they discuss how the open movement is changing education, how it can alter the scholarly publishing paradigm, and why librarians should care. A panel of two librarians and one faculty member actively teaching using open resources will discuss open material within the context of the current landscape, finding and promoting open resources to extend collections, and how open access licensing works for the content creators and users.   This session will be a good basic introduction to open access and open educational resources – what they are, how they work, how to get started using them, and how libraries can play a role in the open movement. But it will go further and also look at how librarians can collaborate and contribute to join in the impassioned discussion about OERs in the broader educational community.