How can academic libraries be better partners in open education?
For more than 10 years, academic libraries have been active players in the open access movement through organizations like the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) and the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC). SPARC has played a role in reducing journal costs, promoting author rights, and setting high standards for peer review. Additionally, academic libraries support open access through institutional repositories, digital publishing, and digital collections of unique and rare holdings. Within the framework of open education, are these priorities -- building institutional repositories, educating authors about their rights, and online publishing -- sufficient contributions? While adept at collecting and organizing content, are libraries effectively meeting new needs for digital preservation and access? What can open education practitioners and academic libraries learn from each other about creating and sharing metadata, information literacy, or integrating primary source material into curricula? Through a discussion of these questions, this session aims to identify the most important opportunities for academic libraries in advancing open access and open scholarship.
