How Libraries Can Shape the Next Era of Open Education

Libraries have been key players in the open education movement for decades, including in the development of open educational resources (OER). But shifting trends in higher education mean that libraries must now do what they do best: adapt.

The four authors of this piece include two long-serving librarians with expertise in OER advocacy and copyright and two early career librarians. Drawing from our collective experience, we have identified three critical actions libraries must take to ensure the long-term sustainability and success of open education:

1. Much more strongly center pedagogy alongside cost savings
2. Utilize libraries’ expertise in copyright, licensing, and technology to assert open values in digital tools
3. Capitalize on the library’s role as an interdisciplinary hub to celebrate the university’s open education practitioners and create community

Open Education and Libraries: An Overview

The open education movement emerged over 20 years ago in response to rising educational costs and the increasing prevalence of digital educational materials, as well as new opportunities created by open licenses. It is no secret that, in recent years, higher education costs have inflated tremendously, and not only for tuition and housing. Since the 1970s, the costs of textbooks and other materials have risen at an estimated three times the rate of inflation, only recently plateauing. At the same time, physical textbooks and workbooks that students could keep for future reference or resell have given way to digital resources that are licensed to students for a limited time. These digital materials often come with increased surveillance and the monetization of our students’ data and identities.

While many instructors do care deeply about textbook costs and the burden they place on students, they may not have as nuanced an understanding of the issue as we’d like to think. Some still think traditional strategies—borrowing from the library, finding a used edition, splitting with a classmate—are viable, not realizing the rise of digital materials working with single-user access codes and proprietary platforms has made that nearly impossible.

Academic libraries have been actively working to develop and implement structures that support the creation of OER. This makes sense: libraries are dedicated to supporting academic freedom and the freedom to discover information. These same principles led to librarians’ position at the forefront of the open access movement, which responded to the rising costs of journal subscriptions by removing barriers to access scholarly research. Out of this work, libraries have become hubs of expertise in publishing, copyright, metadata, and scholarly communications, skills that perfectly complement faculty members’ subject expertise and pedagogical experience, leaving us well-positioned to help faculty take greater ownership over their course materials while delivering the cost savings and customization that traditional textbooks cannot.

Libraries have adapted to the changing landscape; many universities now have librarians whose roles revolve around open. Furthermore, open education is frequently embedded and prioritized in libraries’ strategic plans, which outline goals for output, cost savings, and overall student success. To achieve these goals, libraries have implemented grant programs, committees, and cross-campus collaborations focused on OER.

Now, academic libraries must take a central role in shaping the future of open education.

Centering Open Pedagogy and Ethics in Open Education

The open education movement is no longer new. But we still haven’t quite figured out how to tell its story. For too long, we’ve allowed affordability to dominate the conversation. We often say that OER should be “free and better” than closed, commercial materials, but we focus on offering free resources rather than explaining how OER can be better. Yes, cost absolutely matters. Yes, access to free textbooks—or any free resource—is a win for students. But if we keep leading with affordability at the expense of pedagogy and ethics, we risk obscuring the transformative potential of open education.

The rising popularity of automatic textbook billing programs illustrates the problem. Under these programs, typically branded as “Inclusive Access,” “Equitable Access,” or similar, universities automatically charge students for digital course materials as part of their tuition or fees. Their attraction is obvious: Publishers or bookstore vendors provide deep discounts through large-scale bundles. On the surface, they address affordability concerns.

But unlike OER, they come with strings attached: automatic enrollment, single-user access codes which typically have time-limited usage, restrictive licenses, surveillance, and a complete lack of pedagogical flexibility. These programs are marketed as solutions to cost, but they fundamentally reinforce the same commercial constraints OER are meant to challenge. “Free vs. cheaper” becomes the whole debate.

Still, growing numbers of faculty are turning to libraries not just to find a free alternative to a textbook, but to collaborate on the development of course materials that better serve their students. Because these resources are openly licensed and allow for adaptation, instructors can align them with learning outcomes, embed active-learning activities, improve accessibility, and iterate based on student feedback—yielding stronger pedagogy. Amplifying these pedagogical benefits and showcasing completed, high-impact projects is what gets traction on campus. From 2014 to 2019, the Alt-Textbook Project at NC State University Libraries, where we work, supported 30 projects. Since 2019, the Project has supported 93 projects—over 3 times as many!

It makes sense that faculty are seeking library support in this work. We offer, among many things, instructional spaces, course design support, publishing expertise, robust technology support, and a deep understanding of scholarly communication. We can help instructors think beyond “replacement” and toward reinvention.

But to effectively invite faculty into this kind of collaboration, libraries must reframe the narrative. OER aren’t just a cheaper option, they’re a better one, pedagogically and ethically. Academic libraries are not just helping faculty to adopt OER; we’re helping them reimagine teaching free from the stranglehold of publisher-driven content.

Open Values in Digital Tools

As trusted experts in copyright and licensing, as well as established providers of new and emerging digital tools, libraries are uniquely positioned to understand technology and negotiate for open values in its implementation.

If education was ever about physical textbooks, that time has passed. Most students today learn from digital materials. Increasingly, their access is mediated by learning management systems (LMS) and proctoring tools—software solutions that help secure online exams by monitoring and verifying test-takers’ identities and behavior during the exam—which are controlled by large, for-profit companies and create opportunities for surveillance.

This supercharges the moral hazard that has always existed in markets for learning materials. Students must use and pay for tools selected by faculty and institutions that are not impacted by price sensitivity and are seldom aware of the issue of surveillance. While some educators reject digital tools, the vast majority use some form of educational technology. For most students at most institutions, these resources are here to stay, even as we leapfrog from one outdated and deteriorating tool to the next hot thing.

Digital tools come wrapped in contract terms and conditions that can be overwhelming or inscrutable for students and educators. Because these business documents can be challenging for educators to evaluate, open educators may struggle to understand and negotiate for the rights they need. At the same time, automatic billing models force institutions into agreements that look a lot like the database licenses that have long been familiar to librarians.

Fortunately, libraries have large departments that focus exclusively on understanding and negotiating licenses. Our own institution has around 40 librarians across two teams who do this work all day every day. Libraries have also developed significant expertise in scholarly communication; library staff trained to practice law can offer particular insight into copyright and licensing.

When it comes to applying this expertise in the context of open education, the “serials crisis” of the 2000s offers a useful analogy. Librarians have spent two decades exploring models and developing resources to negotiate open access to scholarship. But with educational technology, as with so called big deals, libraries risk getting locked into an unsustainable model.

A library-led solution will require significant changes in the way that educational resources are acquired. Libraries should negotiate licenses for educational technologies with an eye toward cost and sustainability, just as they do for other campus resources, in addition to addressing concerns around privacy, accessibility, and agency.

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) presents its own set of challenges, raising questions of law, technology, credit, and citation. As GenAI is integrated into educational technologies, librarians will be needed both to safeguard our values and to explain these issues in a way that can defuse anxiety in the open education community. We should serve as trusted advisors, supporting instructors as they make open pedagogy-based decisions.

Open Education, Community, and Recognition

Open education has an isolation problem, with its practitioners often scattered across institutions and regions. From our own faculty and from librarians from other institutions, we have heard anecdotes about instructors who feel siloed as one of a few people—or the only person—in their department or college to do such work. Their colleagues may not be familiar with open education or may even frown upon their involvement in “non-scholarly” endeavors.

There are, of course, regional and national communities where practitioners can connect, learn from each other, and engage in professional development activities—groups we’re part of. But having a local campus community can be a huge boost to faculty morale, which is, in turn, instrumental for OER sustainability and success.

As an interdisciplinary hub for collaboration, the library is in a unique position to celebrate and foster such a community. The library has been doing the work of attracting and collaborating with diverse campus partners, making librarians experts not only at working with various groups, but at adapting to best serve their needs. As a community space, we can succeed where individual academic units may struggle to coordinate efforts across disciplinary lines.

At NC State, we connect instructors from different fields, organize communities of practice, such as our Open Pedagogy Incubator, and provide consistent, long-term support rooted in values of openness, inclusion, and academic freedom, including by working on faculty open education projects.

Of course, creating, adopting, and adapting OER, or redesigning assignments and courses to align with open values, takes time and effort that is not always formally recognized through reappointment, promotion, and tenure (RPT) processes. Working at a research-intensive institution, we are all too aware of the pressures faculty face to prove their value. While engagement in open education falls seamlessly into the categories of teaching, research, and service, OER efforts are not necessarily integrated into evaluation frameworks.

While libraries might not be responsible for restructuring RPT, they have a role to play in helping to translate and amplify the work of faculty. Utilizing our campus-wide reach and existing modes of communication, we can spotlight faculty and their open projects. Depending on capacity and resources, we can give open education awards or celebrate open projects. At NC State, we do this through our Libraries News and Library Stories platforms.

While open education work is in itself is valuable—we have seen its benefits over the past two decades, from giving instructors agency over their course materials to actively engaging students in their coursework—if we are to attract and maintain interest from a greater number of faculty and instructors, we need to start formally building mechanisms to celebrate and reward it. Libraries are well-positioned to do both.

Conclusion

Open education offers a more accessible, more adaptable, and more inclusive alternative to mainstream course materials. To ensure its future, we must meet the challenges on the horizon, from new technologies to complex platform and licensing negotiations to valuing and recognizing open work. Libraries—sitting at the intersection of pedagogy, infrastructure, and policy—are uniquely placed to meet these challenges; they belong at the forefront of the movement’s next chapter.