EDITOR'S NOTES
Libraries Opening Up to Open, Seamless Access
by Dick Kaser
OA has matured, bringing its own set of infrastructure issues. How are libraries assuring that students and scholars get digital access to the OA journal literature? What are the issues around OERs? And what’s being done to get past the paywalls and ensure seamless access for patrons at institutions that pay to subscribe to digital content collections?
As for OA scholarly literature, it’s been a challenge to identify and discover. Linda Barr (Austin Community College Library Services) tells how she and her fellow librarians used the CloudSource OA pilot project as a way to identify the general issues related to curating and offering OA articles. Sarah Guy and Shelby Carroll discuss their CloudSource+ pilot participation while they were librarians at Carolina University, citing opportunities to save library funds and enhance the library’s ability to support a wide-ranging curriculum.
For EDTECH, Julie Erickson and Joan Upell, who are both affiliated with Technology & Innovation in Education (TIE), describe the program they developed for school librarians in North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming to encourage curating, developing, and sharing OERs online.
In addition to providing OER materials, librarians Anaya Jones (Northeastern University) and Trisha Prevett (Southern New Hampshire University) discuss the use of paid library digital resources in student course materials. And Rachel Evans and Jason Tubinis, law librarians at the University of Georgia, describe their adoption of OpenAthens for streamlining student and faculty access to library resources with SSO authentication.
While the subjects covered in this edition are broad, it touches on many issues and current solutions for librarians who are considering how to make information access more open, seamless, and affordable for today’s library users.
Dick Kaser, Executive Editor
kaser@infotoday.com
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