ROLE OF LIBRARIES AND LIBRARIANS IN PROMOTING OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES

The paper aims to discuss the Role of Libraries and Librarians in Open Educational Resources (OER) in academic libraries. More specifically, the study sought to find out the level of OER awareness among academic communities and the role played by libraries and Library and information science (LIS) professionals in OER in academic libraries. The study identified the challenges encountered by librarians in promoting access and use of OER. It shows that most LIS professionals are aware of the concept OER and also play multiple roles in promoting awareness on OER and its adoption in academic library websites to facilitate their accessibility and use. The Internet coupled with OER with growing capabilities, offer unprecedented opportunities for significantly broadening access to quality educational resources for different sectors. Open educational resources (OER) have emerged recently as an answer to the need for open and reusable educational material, freely available online. Making educational resources ‘open' means it is available at no cost to others for adaptation and reuse in different contexts. Library and information centers can contribute to the open educational commons by creating OERs themselves. There are many libraries and library consortiums that have taken the leadership in producing resources for all. With the changing time LIS professionals need to stay abreast and remain open to the changing trends in the educational world and also gain experience with changing technologies, become an essential partner in the collaborative educational efforts of both faculty member and student. The leading institutions provided their educational contents open to all without any cost, without any barrier. Open educational resources and involvement & opportunity for library and LIS professionals depicted by the paper