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The production of new scholarly material is not without costs. While the end product may be free to read and free of most copyright restrictions, the production of OER requires substantial institutional investment—primarily in labor—for services such as peer review management, copy editing, typesetting, and the like. These up-front costs, combined with the lack of a clear revenue stream for OER, pose a challenge. Further complicating things, the possible implementations of OER may vary significantly as OER initiatives span departments, institutions, and systems. As is the case with other initiatives in higher education, research, assessment, and evaluation activities become necessary to support and sustain OER. Whether it is identifying milestones and stakeholders, surveying technical infrastructure and support, designing success criteria and evaluation, or shepherding training and curriculum changes, OER initiatives beg for collaboration among the various departments of our institutions. Some, including the editors of this book, look to academic librarians as uniquely qualified to lead such efforts (Bell & Salem, 2017). Simply, academic librarians are already well versed in managing content and working with others across disciplinary, professional, and geographic lines.

We intend this book to act as a guide writ large for would-be champions of OER, that anyone—called to action by the example set by our chapter authors—might serve as guides themselves. The following chapters tap into the deep experience of practitioners who represent a meaningful cross-section of higher education institutions in North America. It is our hope that the examples and discussions presented by our authors will facilitate connections among practitioners, foster the development of best practices for OER adoption and creation, and more importantly, lay a foundation for novel educational excellence.

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