With students increasingly buried under crushing debt for their college education, open educational resources (OER) attempt to lower their costs by using free, openly licensed alternatives. Many academic libraries nationally are encouraging faculty to ditch the expensive textbooks and incentivizing the adoption of OER in the classroom, or offering Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) to increase access to education to all. This program will offer attendees an overview of OER, how libraries can encourage faculty to adopt OER, and discuss programs in place at Oklahoma State University and Arizona State University

There’s a “Gold rush” happening in the new frontier of open access publishing! As publishers experiment with new business models, there’s an explosion of new journal titles and publishers. In the tradition of all boomtowns, outlaws move in as well as upstanding citizens - and they often look alike. With no real marshall in town, how can librarians sort out the good guys from the bad?

This discussion will guide you through the wild landscape of open access journal publishing, the advantages and disadvantages for libraries and authors, and give tips on sizing up the good, the bad, and the ugly.