Four ways librarians are essential to the future of open textbooks and OER | BCcampus

"When the Open Textbook Project started two years ago, librarians were identified as one of the important stakeholder groups with essential skills and insights to support faculty in finding and adopting quality open educational resources (OER) ... BCcampus began a conversation with some interested librarians, and within a year convened an OER Librarians group committed to advocating OER in their institutions. That conversation culminated in an event this week at Douglas College giving librarians ideas, tools, and motivation for continuing to raise awareness in BC post-secondary institutions. Here are just four of the take-aways (from four of the speakers) from that gathering.  1. Librarians can assist faculty in working through the Creative Commons licensing process (Todd Mundle) ... 2. Librarians can help construct the unique messages – the elevator speeches – that are going to persuade decision makers (Quill West) ... 3. Librarians are embedded in their institutions in a unique way (Mary Burgess) ... 4. Librarians can be a highly motivated, agile resource for textbook authors (Clint Lalonde) ..."