Coalition of More Than 85 Organizations Asks White House to Open Up Access to Federally Funded Educational Resources

From SPARC:

Today, The Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), along with a broad coalition of more than 85 education, library, technology, public interest, and legal organizations, called on the White House to take administrative action to ensure federally funded educational materials are made available as Open Educational Resources (OER) that are free to use, share, and improve.
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“At a time when educational opportunity, workforce development and access to knowledge are critical to America’s future, taxpayers should have access to the educational and training materials arising from billions of dollars invested in relevant programs each year,” said Nicole Allen, SPARC Director of Open Education. “We’re grateful for President Obama’s leadership in advancing public access to publicly funded resources and urge the Administration to use this opportunity to make federally funded educational materials available as Open Educational Resources that are free to use, share, and improve.”

• The coalition has outlined five core principles for Administration policy on this issue:
• Adopt a broad definition of educational materials;
• Provide free access via the Internet;
• Create conditions for resources that enable reuse;
• Require prompt implementation; and
• Regular reporting of progress and results.

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Members of the public can join the call for opening up taxpayer-funded educational materials by tweeting with hashtag #OERUSA and by signing the letter at http://www.oerusa.org/

Read the Complete SPARC Announcement
Direct to Full Text Letter Sent to President Obama
Some of the 85+ Organizations that are Part of the Coalition and Signed the Letter Include:

• ACRL
• ARL
• Boston Library Consortium
• Cornell University Library
• Creative Commons
• Duke University Libraries
• Florida State University Libraries
• Harvard Law School Library
• Internet Archive
• Johns Hopkins University
• North Carolina State University Libraries
• Old Dominion University Libraries
• Special Libraries Association
• The SUNY Council of Library Directors
• Texas A&M University Libraries
• Tufts University Libraries
• Tulane University
• University Libraries and Scholarly Communications, Penn State University
• The University of California Libraries
• University of Colorado Boulder, University Libraries
• University of Hawaii at Mānoa Library Services
• University of Florida, George A. Smathers Libraries
• University of Iowa Libraries
• University of Kansas Libraries
• University of Kentucky Libraries
• University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries
• Virginia Commonwealth University Libraries
• Virginia Tech University Libraries

Additional Signers Can Be Seen at www.oerusa.org.

Filed under: Academic Libraries, Associations and Organizations, Libraries, Management and Leadership, News, Publishing, Scholarly Communications, School Libraries, Special Libraries