Librarians and OER: Cultivating a community of practice to be more effective advocates

As the costs of scholarly and educational publications skyrocket, open educational resources (OER) are becoming an important way to provide content and enhance the teaching and learning experience. Librarians have a key role to play in developing, advocating, and managing OER. For many librarians, however, championing OERs means adding an additional responsibility to their already heavy workloads, which may be overwhelming. This article describes how a grassroots group of academic librarians in British Columbia, Canada joined together as a community of practice to learn and to share ideas, strategies, and tools to support the use of OER. The BCOER Librarians focus on the education and professional development of librarians to help facilitate the use and development of OERs and to create authoritative and sustainable resources to support librarians in OER-related interactions with faculty.