Publishing on a Dime: Opportunities and Challenges in Creating an OER Publishing Program

As the rising cost of textbooks continues to burden students, many libraries have begun to facilitate the creation and publishing of Open Educational Resources (OER). The presentation will focus on the opportunities and challenges of creating a library publishing program with limited funding. Lessons learned from open education publishing initiatives will be shared. At Portland State University (PSU), Karen Bjork has worked with faculty on campus to publish eight open access textbooks that have benefited students on an economic and educational level. She will discuss the implementation of the open textbook publishing initiative and share how the library combined the open access values and project management resources of the library with the book production expertise of the Ooligan Press, a graduate program teaching press affiliated with PSU. Open textbook creation best practices and workflows will also be shared. The University of Massachusetts Amherst has led an Open Education Initiative on campus since fall 2011, incorporating open educational resources, library materials, and original content from faculty. Original content is deposited into ScholarWorks @ UMass Amherst. Marilyn Billings will discuss how to achieve buy-in from top administrators, how to build campus-wide partnerships in support of an open education program, as well as how to sell such a program to faculty and create an active cohort group along the way. She will include pointers on overcoming challenges to achieve a successful publishing program