A proposal to bring together the European community of creators and users of OER in LIS: a participatory website around an aggregator

Abstract

The content of this communication is based on a Bachelor’s degree Thesis that proposes a new infrastructure to harvest and give access to existing OER in the LIS field. In this thesis, the need of a community landing page for those interested in OER’s is emphasized. Both in the research carried out in this thesis and in the Intellectual Outputs resulting from the DECriS (Digital Education for Crisis Situations: Times when there is no alternative) project, there is a clear lack of a focal point that gathers the LIS community interested in OER. European communities such as those within DECriS or BOBCATSSS, as well as in other informal networks, which consist of a number of LIS professionals and teachers, and where debates and news are already circulating, could benefit from a "meeting point" where all matters, information and debates around OER would be available. Since there are already a lot of different repositories and aggregators that give access to OER’s, the creation of just another technological tool is not enough to secure its use. Therefore, communication amongst those who use or create them should be an integral part of this new infrastructure. Participatory dynamics prior to the implementation of this proposed new aggregator (or other tool that fits the needs of our community) are needed in order to set the foundations and secure its use and success.