Workshop 6 | LIBER Educational Resources Working Group: Enhance the Discoverability of Open Textbooks

Workshop 6 | LIBER Educational Resources Working Group: Enhance the Discoverability of Open Textbooks

Room: Andreas Themistokleous – Room Larnaca
Organised by the Educational Resources Working Group 
Speakers: Elena Gallina and Suzanne Tatham

This LIBER’s Working Group aims to support European librarians in their role to provide educational resources to staff and students. Under the LIBER strategic priority “Advancing Open Science” the group is working at “Opening up access to educational resources: Supporting the creation, access, and usage of Open Educational Resources”. In the course of two years, from 2023-2024, the focus is on promoting and advancing in the area of open textbooks.

In the first part of this pre-conference workshop, we will present and discuss with you the progress and outcome of the LIBER Educational Resource Working Group, like:

  • The identification of the largest and most important open textbook collections worldwide;
  • Results of a survey among European librarians on how OER- and Open Access materials are integrated into their discovery systems;
  • Options of activating internationally renowned open textbook collections within the common discovery systems (like in EBSCO Discovery Service and Primo/ExLibris) in order to make open textbooks more discoverable in your own library;
  • Discussions with DOAB, the Directory of Open Access Books, as well as OERSI, the OER Search Index on enhancing the discoverability of open textbooks.
  • Evaluation and enhancement of open textbook specific metadata available in discovery systems, like information on respective Creative Commons licenses.

In the second part, we want to discuss and work out in groups,

  1. how each single library can build upon these results and can add to the enhancement of the discoverability of open textbooks, e.g. through
    • collection management – (prioritizing open, offering existing open textbook collections to users, …),
    • awareness raising among teachers (on e-book pricing, open alternatives, …)
    • enhancing metadata and search options (on open licenses, …);
  2. where challenges must be taken up with combined forces – within LIBER working groups or other strategic bodies; and
  3. how the discoverability of open textbooks can be enhanced in general – for a worldwide use of these valuable resources for life long and sustainable learning opportunities.

54th LIBER Annual Conference