SPARC in the Age of COVID-19 - SPARC

"After 2016, we eliminated the overhead and travel burden of SPARC’s annual meeting in favor of meeting our members where they live. We’ve increased our team’s regular campus visits and actively support local and regional community events to make sure that more of those in our member libraries who want to participate have more equitable opportunities to do so. We’ve also upped our online game, adding regular just-in-time programs on everything from preparing for “Big Deal” negotiations to running a one-person scholarly communications office to developing campus open access policies.

We also created new online opportunities for professional development like our first-of-its-kind Open Education Leadership Program and increased opportunities for our members’ voices to be heard by policymakers via online advocacy. So from a purely practical standpoint, we are well-positioned to continue to operate at full speed....

Meanwhile, as COVID-19 has thrown the entire operations of higher education institutions online virtually overnight, providing access to high-quality free, open educational resources has become an essential requirement in providing students with the best possible environment to continue their studies. As the first library membership organization to embrace and promote open education and OER, there is high demand for SPARC to accelerate our successful efforts in increasing the awareness, creation and adoption of OER throughout our member institutions as a cost effective strategy for student retention....

We realize that we’re living in a world that will be defined as “before and after COVID-19.” At SPARC, we recognize the magnitude of the challenges facing our community and our society. We’re immensely fortunate to have a remit to do work that can—and will—have a direct positive impact on our member libraries’ ability to individually thrive, and to collectively contribute to creating a more open, equitable and sustainable post-COVID system for sharing knowledge. It’s a mission we are more committed than ever to making a reality along with all of you."