Community of Learning and OER (Open Educational Resources): What Role for Digital Libraries?

Abstract

A context facilitating sharing and collaboration together with access to open educational resources (OER), is considered a necessity to improve learning. UNESCO and other international institutions such as SPARC and IFLA, along with scholars leading the scientific debate on Open Education and OER (OER), indicate that digital libraries offer many of the services for collaborative knowledge creation. The article describes the many different services that an increasing number of hybrid and digital libraries play to support learning in the various OER functionalities described in the 5R framework (Wiley). Despite these good practices, there is still a gap between digital libraries and Open Education. Different concepts of the digital library, related to a traditional vision of service, hinder the promises that libraries could offer. In conclusion, some of the current barriers to service are indicated, which can be identified in the lack of professional skills for a education role, together with the absence or inadequacy of local and national support policies.