by Ida Mae Craddock and Heather Moorefield-Lang, November 2022

OER is the acronym for open educational resources. These are freely available educational and research materials. They come with little to no restrictions regarding access. OERs are growing in popularity and importance in the areas of education and librarianship. They open the door for equitable access to knowledge and help us offer a wider selection of resources to our students. No one school library can have access to all information, but OERs make more information available to our learning communities (IFLA 2019).

In the world of OERs, librarians and their students can use these resources, but we can also create them. OERs can be just about any type of material. Some examples include online courses, course materials, videos, software, code, textbooks, infographics, learning content, research, and so much more. OER materials are available in the public domain or they are released with an open license allowing access with no-cost. OERs are also available to use, distribute, and adapt with no, or very few, restrictions.

Take a look at some excellent OER resources for both using and creating.

OER Commons: https://www.oercommons.org/

A free online library of open and accessible resources for librarians and peer educators. OER Commons is probably one of the most well known locations for open educational resources. They curate materials and are part of a worldwide movement for open access to high quality materials. In OER Commons, users can search for teaching and learning materials across any subject area. This site also offers an Open Author Tool to create and share documents and lessons, building and adding to the world of OER. There are also microsites and hubs for sharing resources internally within your school if you choose. There are special interest groups educators can join as well. Any material offered or created to be shared in OER Commons does so with few to no ownership rights. These documents are being shared under Creative Commons licenses, which will explain how each item can be shared, used, or altered. Unfamiliar with Creative Commons licenses? They give everyone, from individual to institution, a standardized way to offer the public permission to use their creative work under copyright law. Creative Commons answers the question, "What Can I Do with This Work?" ("About CC Licenses"). If you are looking for a one-stop shop in open educational resources, you should definitely check out OER Commons.

Khan Academy: https://www.khanacademy.org/

Many of you will know Khan Academy already, but if you haven't taken a look at this resource lately, make sure to visit. Khan Academy offers free videos, practice exercises, courses, and more. A site originally started with math demonstration videos now offers instruction in history, science, computer science, SAT prep, art history, basic to advanced math, and so much more. This is a site where users have access to OERs. There isn't an option to create or modify content, but the wealth of information here is abundant.

Smithsonian Open Access: https://www.si.edu/openaccess

Smithsonian Open Access is an online tool where users can download, share, redistribute, and reuse images from the Smithsonian without asking for any permissions. There are over four million 2D and 3D digital resources in the collection for students, librarians, and peer educators to play with. Images available come from nineteen different Smithsonian museums and nine different research centers, as well as their libraries, National Zoo, and archives. A wonderful site of images to explore and use for projects, presentations, and infographics.

The sites and resources listed here only scratch the surface of OERs available for our K–12 learning communities. We highly recommend searching further for Open Educational Resources for your libraries and classrooms. It is an exciting world of materials from a vast array of creators, and it expands what we can offer our students in their learning every day.

Works Cited

"About CC Licenses." Creative Commons. https://creativecommons.org/about/cclicenses/. Accessed October 2022.

IFLA. "Open Educational Resources and Libraries: A Briefing." IFLA, 2019. https://www.ifla.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/assets/clm/news/oer_ifla_brief.pdf.