This interactive session offers a deep dive into School Librarians’ OER curation practices, based on findings from a national study led by ISKME and funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The session presents a new framework to guide OER curation practice that was developed through the study, and discusses research-based strategies for supporting School Librarians as OER curators in districts and in schools.

1. Supporting School
Librarians as OER Curators
San Diego 2019
#GoOpen Summit
Amee Evans Godwin, ISKME
Dr. Cynthia Jimes, ISKME
ISKME 2019
Presentation is part of a project supported by IMLS RE-
86-17-0035-17

2. High Level View of ISKME’s OER Work
● Professional learning program to support OER adoption and use
● Extensive body of empirical research on OER practice, and the
supports needed to enable that practice
● Field-tested tools, rubrics, and guides to support OER adoption
across classrooms, districts, and states

3. Introductions
● Your name
● Your role and organization
● What interests you about this session

4. What We’ll Cover Today
● Background to ISKME’s School Librarian Study
● An Example School Librarian OER Curation Workflow
● The Feasibility of Implementing a Similar Model in Your Contexts

5. About the Study
● National study by
ISKME, in partnership
with Florida State
University School of
Information
● Supported by the
Institute of Library and
Museum Services
(www.imls.gov)
Aim: Explore existing OER curation
practice, and build a framework to
guide K-12 OER curation for school
librarians
Outcome: A set of practical
recommendations that address IMLS
priorities for school librarian
leadership in advancing effective
curation of OER to enhance teaching
and learning

6. WA
CA
FL
NH
MI
Overview of the Study Approach
● 50 school librarians across
five states
● Surveys on their current
digital curation practice
● In-depth “think aloud”
interviews with a subset
● Interviews with their district
leaders
Image by Tanguy Keryhuel
The Noun Project

7. Digital Curation - Working Definition
The continuous...
● identification,
● evaluation,
● description,
● organization,
● and promotion
...of digital resources for curriculum and instruction to match the
needs of the targeted school or school system audience.
Digital curation may include both proprietary digital materials
and openly licensed materials.

8. What the SL Brings to OER Curation
● Targeted information literacy expertise
● Knowledge of how to find resources and to make things
discoverable by others
● Knowledge of how to select the best types and formats of
resources
● Expertise in technology for digital curation
● Understanding of copyright and its pitfalls, and the benefits
of open licenses
● Instructional leadership expertise

9. Walkthrough: OER Curation Workflow

10. 1 Collaboratively Identify Curriculum
Needs
In response to state
requirements that tribal
sovereignty curriculum be
taught in all schools, a teacher-
librarian joins a team with the
district’s Social Studies
curriculum specialist and
teachers to develop new units
for Grade 4 Social Studies that
meet those requirements. Image created by Oksana Latysheva from Noun Project

11. 2 Agree on Curriculum Foundation and
Frameworks
The team uses their state
department of education’s
Tribal Sovereignty Curriculum
Flow Chart to guide their
work, and identifies where the
units will fit into their district’s
social studies curriculum map.
The school librarian takes the
lead in ensuring that the
essential questions for the
units being designed can be
supported by available
resources to curate from.

12. 3 Search in Dedicated OER Collections
The team starts building
each unit by searching for
primary source texts to help
students to successfully
move through the identified
learning objectives.
The school librarian takes
the lead in searching,
evaluating, selecting, and
organizing resources, with a
focus on public domain
collections such as the
Library of Congress and
Wikimedia Commons.

13. 4b Evaluate Use Permissions
The school librarian examines
the use permissions for the
resources under review, using
thePermissions Guide for
Educators as support.
If under copyright, the
librarian requests permission
to use the resource from the
rights holder and document
the response.

14. 4a Evaluate for Quality &
Appropriateness
The school librarian follows the
Stanford History Education
Group’s (SHEG) model for
harvesting primary sources.
The school librarian also
examines the resource to
determine if it relates to the
other resources under
consideration, and whether it
adds value and not just volume.
● Sourcing - ID origin and purpose of
each source
● Contextualizing: Locate each source
in its historical context
● Corroborating: Compare each source
to others collected
● Close Reading: Analyze author’s
claims, evidence, language/visuals,
POV
More on the SHEG Model is at: Reading Like A Historian
SHEG Model

15. 5a Build and Align to Learning
Standards
The team collaboratively
writes student activities
around the selected
primary sources, and builds
a unit.
They evaluate the unit draft
using the Washington
Quality Review Rubric for
Social Studies Lessons and
Units, which is based on the
EQuIP Rubric.

16. 5b Build and Align to DEI Requirements
The team also evaluates the
unit using a WA OSPI rubric
for assessing bias in
instructional content.
The rubric includes
components on gender/sex,
culture/ethnicity, socio-
economic status, disability
status, and family structure.

17. 5c Build and Align to Accessibility
Requirements
The team gets familiar with WA
OSPI’s resources listed under
Making Web Content and
Documents Accessible
The team runs the units
through a quick Accessibility
Checklist to ensure its
alignment to accessibility
standards for web-based
content.

18. 6 Share
The team shares the
completed units locally in
Google Drive.
They also share the units
publicly in an OER library for
future teachers outside of
the district to reuse and
adapt.

19. 7 Pilot and Refine
The team incorporates teacher
feedback on the units after
they have been implemented,
using a simple feedback form
developed locally.
After revisions are made, the
team reshares the refined
version both locally and
publically.

20. Exploring the OER Curation
Framework
● Take 10 minutes to explore the framework on your own
● Access the framework here: https://tinyurl.com/SL-OER-
Curation
● (Spend a little extra time on Appendix A)
● As you read, consider:
○ What do you like about the framework?
○ What might you change?
○ How might you use it?

21. Handout: Assessing “Readiness” for
OER Curriculum Development that
Leverages School Librarians

22. Discussion
1. Where are your answers similar with others at your table?
2. Where are they different?
3. What next steps will you take, if any, related to this work?

23. Thank you!
Cynthia Jimes
Director, Research and Learning
cynthia@iskme.org
Amee Evans Godwin
VP, Research and Development
amee@iskme.org