According to the Student-PIRGs, students pay an average of $1200/per year on textbooks. This is a significant cost when added to the cost of tuition and fees. By adopting open education resources, over costly traditional textbooks, we can make education more accessible. Open education resources are alternatives to expensive, restrictive, traditionally published textbooks. They offer freedoms to revise, remix, reuse, redistribute, and retain (definition by David Wiley).

Librarians in Washington’s Community and Technical Colleges are using a LSTA grant to take our place as leaders driving open education adoption and advocacy at participating colleges. Librarians are Open Education Leaders.

We are currently in the third and final year of the grant/2016-2017.

The Library as Open Education Leader (LOEL) grant project is a collaboration between the WA Library Leadership Council and College Librarians & Media Specialists (CLAMS) with support from the E-Learning Council and State Board for Community & Technical Colleges (SBCTC). The grant is funded by the WA Office of the Secretary of State and Institute of Museum and Library Services. This project supports cyclical planning for Open Education (OE) programs and advocacy, creates opportunities for librarians to become leaders in open education in Washington State, encourages collaboration between faculty and librarians on OE adoption, and increases the visibility and value of librarians at colleges.