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New Milestone: Open Library has saved students over $12 million! 

The eCampusOntario Open Library has hit an exciting milestone of saving Ontario students over $12 million in course material costs. The Open Library provides educators and learners with access to more than 600 free and openly-licensed educational resources (OER). Ontario instructors can access these resources to create or adopt OER to replace an existing assigned resource. This translates into savings for students who need to purchase fewer mandatory commercial textbooks.  

“We are really thrilled to see the ongoing adoption of OER by both educators and learners. eCampusOntario and its partners have strived to continually improve the Open Library in support of postsecondary educators and learners. It’s a wonderful achievement to reach $12 million in savings for students working hard to reach their educational objectives,” said Rama Kaba-Demanin, acting Digital Access & OER Lead, eCampusOntario.  

How It Works 

Since the Open Library’s launch in 2017, it has been a hub of virtual activity, growth and impact, as it seeks to meet the needs of Ontario’s postsecondary educators and learners. The Open Library supports educators and learners in three ways: 1) provides access to a collection of open textbooks and other resources, aligned with the top subject areas in postsecondary education; 2) offers the ability to customize OER to suit your needs or students’ needs; and 3) provides options and tools to explore for creating a resource for the Open Library.  

To date, 38 Ontario institutions are known to actively use and incorporate OER into learning experiences. What’s more, the shared adoption of resources in the Open Library goes beyond this province, impacting educators and learners globally as illustrated here: https://openlibrary.ecampusontario.ca/impact/    

Showcasing action and impact 

A great way to build on the momentum for OER and showcase the positive effect it’s having, is to provide real-time data on who is using the resources, in what ways and from where in the world. Check out the latest stats at the Open Library’s Impact page and see a global overview of OER downloads, data about savings for Ontario students, the uptake by colleges and universities and more. There’s also an Impact Calculator which can determine how much students can save if an OER is adopted for a specific course section. 

Share your insights  

If you’re using the Open Library and have insights and feedback to share, we’d love to hear them. When educators share with the community that they have created or adopted an OER to replace a commercial textbook, it illustrates the impact the Open Library has, as well as the OER movement at large. If you adopt an OER from the Open Library or elsewhere, be sure to tell us about it here: https://openlibrary.ecampusontario.ca/report-an-adoption/   

Walkthrough our virtual doors and Visit the library today or follow us on Twitter for updates about new OER, events and more.