It’s Up to the Librarians: Establishing A Statewide OER Initiative

Abstract

Academic librarians increasingly adopt roles as campus leaders to promote the adoption of Open Educational Resources (OER) and other strategies to encourage making textbook affordability for students an institutional priority. When it comes to a statewide strategy to support academic library efforts for textbook affordability, Pennsylvania is lagging more progressive states such as Oregon, Georgia, Ohio, Virginia and Louisiana. This article makes a case for and lays out a strategy by which Pennsylvania’s academic librarians can develop a statewide initiative to tackle the challenge of textbook affordability together in order to achieve substantial progress.