Open Education Resources: Decreasing Costs And Increasing Freedom

Students, parents, faculty, and administrators are painfully aware of the high cost of traditional textbooks. Faculty are also aware that commercial teaching resources may be unnecessarily restrictive from a teaching point of view. As educators, there are many compelling reasons to participate in the use and development of open education resources (OER). Open education resources provide a cost-free alternative to traditional textbooks and facilitate important pedagogical opportunities. Faculty using OER in their teaching may select, combine, and even adapt the content to develop the most effective course materials. While OER can offer increased freedom for faculty and cost savings for students, there are challenges in using or developing open educational resources. This talk will discuss some of the benefits of OER to faculty and students, examples of how OER is being used, and suggest strategies for overcoming challenges

Addressing Faculty Publishing Concerns with Open Access Journal Quality Indicators

BACKGROUND The scholarly publishing paradigm is evolving to embrace innovative open access publication models. While this environment fosters the creation of high-quality, peer-reviewed open access publications, it also provides opportunities for journals or publishers to engage in unprofessional or unethical practices.LITERATURE REVIEW Faculty take into account a number of factors in deciding where to publish, including whether or not a journal engages in ethical publishing practices. Librarians and scholars have attempted to address this issue in a number of ways, such as generating lists of ethical/unethical publishers and general guides.DESCRIPTION OF PROJECT In response to growing faculty concern in this area, the Grand Valley State University Libraries developed and evaluated a set of Open Access Journal Quality Indicators that support faculty in their effort to identify the characteristics of ethical and unethical open access publications. NEXT STEPS Liaison librarians have already begun using the Indicators as a catalyst in sparking conversation around open access publishing and scholarship. Going forward, the Libraries will continue to evaluate and gather feedback on the Indicators, taking into account emerging trends and practices

C.A.R.E.: Practical Tools for Sustaining Care, Accountability, and Radical Empathy in Difficult Times

Engage in an online dialogue and explore ways to continue to meet the needs of users in difficult times while also setting and upholding healthy boundaries. Together we will explore care, generous accountability, and radical empathy for one another and for our users in public libraries. The presenters will share some self-reflective pre-work ahead of the session as well as a discussion guide to use locally after the session. Prepare to dig into practical tools that will enhance effective communications and sustain user-focused practices while meeting our own needs

Addressing Faculty Publishing Concerns with Open Access Journal Quality Indicators

BACKGROUND The scholarly publishing paradigm is evolving to embrace innovative open access publication models. While this environment fosters the creation of high-quality, peer-reviewed open access publications, it also provides opportunities for journals or publishers to engage in unprofessional or unethical practices. LITERATURE REVIEW Faculty take into account a number of factors in deciding where to publish, including whether or not a journal engages in ethical publishing practices. Librarians and scholars have attempted to address this issue in a number of ways, such as generating lists of ethical/unethical publishers and general guides. DESCRIPTION OF PROJECT In response to growing faculty concern in this area, the Grand Valley State University Libraries developed and evaluated a set of Open Access Journal Quality Indicators that support faculty in their effort to identify the characteristics of ethical and unethical open access publications. NEXT STEPS Liaison librarians have already begun using the Indicators as a catalyst in sparking conversation around open access publishing and scholarship. Going forward, the Libraries will continue to evaluate and gather feedback on the Indicators, taking into account emerging trends and practices

Open Partnerships: Identifying and Recruiting Allies for Open Educational Resources Initiatives

Cummings-Sauls, Ruen, Beaubien, and Smith extend conversations about OER-enabled partnerships by exhaustively describing the roles and responsibilities harbored by potential stakeholders in OER initiatives and highlighting the ways in which librarians might instigate partnerships between these groups. By clearly identifying the stakes of library, faculty, student, administrative, instructional design, information technology, and bookstore partnerships, the authors promote a sort of inventory for how and why we might meaningfully engage these local audiences in support of OER. Looking beyond our institutions to the broader external communities, legislation, and services related to OER, this chapter introduces the importance of considering how conversations might (and ultimately 8 OER: A FIELD GUIDE FOR ACADEMIC LIBRARIANS should) scale to include metrics that are worth sharing outside of our respective institutions

Programmatic Review Process Guide

The Grand Valley State University Libraries created a programmatic review process to review, realign, and renew its programmatic areas as the University faced changes and budget challenges. This programmatic review process guide details the Libraries’ guiding principles, prioritization approach, and decision-making criteria created to address the process by which library resources may be allocated. The Libraries were proactively reacting to the University’s projected budget shortfalls as a result of the continued demographic decline in college-aged individuals as well as the global pandemic. In this guide, University Libraries has clearly defined its mission for the coming years, the expectations and desired outcomes of mission fulfillment, an implementation timeline and a communication plan for the review process as well as templates for questions to be discussed, recommendations, and Executive Team rationale

Establishing a Shared Vision for an Integrated Approach to Collections and Scholarly Communications

Over the past decade, the University Libraries\u27 Digital Collections have grown from an assemblage of discrete projects into two distinct programs that curate, manage, and publish digitized and born-digital materials online for educational and scholarly uses by Grand Valley State University\u27s community and the wider public. As these collections have grown, the support for creating, sharing, and preserving these materials has expanded from the Special Collections & University Archives into Systems and Technology Services, Knowledge Access and Resource Management Services, and Scholarly Communications, which manages the Libraries\u27 other Digital Collection program, consisting of the Institutional Repository (IR) and a suite of library publishing services. While cross-departmental collaborations have been fruitful, the library staff and faculty responsible for these separate Digital Collection programs are exploring structural evolution that will unify their parallel efforts in order to support a more holistic Digital Collections program that is sustainable and effective into the future. This report summarizes the findings of the group\u27s inquiry, which included reviews of the tasks, skills, and operations of the team, a review of digital collection programs at peer institutions, and review of aspirational digital collection programs. It includes recommendations for moving forward, near future next steps, and opportunities and challenges to consider as we progress

Building Inclusive Libraries: Kindness, Equity, and Candidate Experiences in Hiring & Onboarding Toolkit

Grounded in an understanding of leading recruitment practices as well as an understanding of the profession’s opportunities and challenges, the toolkit offers pragmatic approaches to move from the theory of inclusive hiring and onboarding to implementation. At each stage of the hiring lifecycle, tips and questions to consider are provided, from language bias in position announcements to methods for developing interview questions to onboarding approaches. The toolkit is designed to be used by supervisors, employees, and any key decision makers involved in the job description writing process. The first half of the toolkit focuses on inclusive hiring processes. First, the section outlines best practices in inclusive hiring from both process and equity perspectives. The toolkit then dives deeper into various components of the hiring process and associated equity lenses. Lastly, the toolkit focuses on articulating responsibilities and duties in position descriptions. The appendices contain sample documents and templates for each stage of the hiring process. The second half of the toolkit focuses on inclusive onboarding, subdivided into four main parts. First, it outlines best practices in inclusive onboarding from both process and equity perspectives. The second part offers an equity lens to use to review the process. The third part outlines components of the onboarding process over a full year in checklist form. The fourth part focuses on responsibilities and duties related to onboarding

Library-Led Open Education Resources Initiatives: Strategies for Engaging Faculty

Open education resources (OER) are freely available materials for educators and learners. The open education movement is quickly expanding to include free textbooks, open courseware, and new models of delivering educational content. With expertise in the areas of open access, copyright, and institutional repositories, Librarians are well-suited to lead open education initiatives. This session discusses strategies for implementing open education initiatives, showcasing and preserving open education materials, and building partnerships to sustain this movement