8 Survey Results: Executive Summary
and educational services, provide pieces that other libraries can use to develop their own blueprint when
ready to implement ACC/OER programs.
New state, national, and possibly global collaborative opportunities that are beginning to
emerge in open textbook or OER publishing are worth highlighting as well. While library awareness and
education efforts may be focused on a local campus, librarians could strategically recruit and incentivize
the creation of new open content (to avoid the duplication of other highly regarded content already
published) across institutions and across the globe to create the broadest possible impact.
Finally, developing sustainable models for funding ACC/OER initiatives and creating more
robust assessment methods are two areas for growth in libraries. Many respondents indicated unclear
or uncertain plans for future funding. Development of more standardized and robust assessment models
could support proposals for permanent funding. While many institutions reported gathering data on cost
savings, very few have tied metrics in course completion or student retention to ACC/OER efforts, factors
that are important to institutional administrators. Other standard assessment measures would allow
aggregation or comparison across institutions as well.
Based on the number of responding institutions, affordable course content and OER support
within libraries continues to grow as an emerging area of interest. Nearly 60 ARL member institutions
have or plan to have significant services and support available in the near future. We predict that this
number will grow as faculty participation and interest increases. Libraries are uniquely poised to act as
leaders, connectors, and content experts on their campuses to further a significant culture change related
to course content selection and use.
NOTE: The executive summary (pages 2–8) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License.
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