Both Open Educational Resources (OER) and Open Access (OA) are becoming more central to many librarians’ work and the core mission of librarianship, in part because of the perceived relationship between openness and social justice. However, in our excitement about the new opportunities afforded by open movements, we might overlook structural inequalities present within these movements. In this article, I utilize some of the useful critiques OA has generated to inform the discussion of OER creation and practice. I then hone in on the conversation around OER specifically to suggest starting points for how librarians and other LIS professionals can construct more thoughtful OER practices.

Keywords

bibliography · library science · information resources · colonization · learning objects · librarianship · inequality · open access · Open Educational Resources · pedagogy