Building an Online Curriculum Based on OERs: The Library's Role

Open Educational Resources (OERs) are online classroom content that can be reused, modified, and shared freely. The University of Maryland University College (UMUC) undertook a project to redesign its undergraduate curriculum using OERs in place of traditional textbooks. UMUC librarians have played a critical role in this project, helping to find and maintain not only OERs but also library database content to be used as learning materials in the online classroom. This article describes how UMUC librarians worked on teams with other university departments in a structured process to search for, select, and curate OERs and library resources. We also discuss the issues that inevitably arose in such a complicated undertaking (issues such as copyright, licensing, and accessibility) and how librarians worked with academic department chairs, instructional designers, and others to overcome those hurdles.