Amanda Langdon is the first OER Librarian at Adams State University, located in rural Alamosa, Colorado. Since 2018, she has developed and now chairs the campus’ first Open Education committee. Her Open Education Initiative includes recognizing existing affordability efforts, outreach and instruction, discovery and evaluation of OER, addressing accessibility issues (incl. print-on-demand), raising campus awareness of student struggles, assisting with copyright/licensing concerns, and encouraging student advocacy. Because of the breadth of this initiative, her capstone project was equally broad:
- She began revamping Nielsen Library’s OER LibGuide to include more relevant information and at the same time, be more user-friendly;
- She created series of reusable presentations for librarian/staff use to educate faculty/staff and/or interested students about the benefits of an Open Education initiative on campus. They were given course numbers to indicate appropriate audience/content levels. Included are: basic/101 slideshow, intermediate/202 slideshow, and advanced/303 slideshow (licensing);
- She built a schedule of campus OER events (including survey dates, presentations of survey data & informational sessions, grant cycles/deadlines, etc.);
- Last, she drafted an outline of a plan for converting Gen-Ed/General Transfer/Highest Enrollment courses to Open/Affordable materials.
- Also included is a folder of additional adaptable resources (presentations & surveys) that Open Education Librarians or advocates may find useful on their own campuses.
Amanda has 8 years of academic library experience in Colorado. She completed her Bachelors in Medieval Studies and Comparative Religion from Cornell College (Iowa), and earned her MLIS, with a focus on Rare Books and Manuscripts, Special Collections and Archives. OER has become her passion project, and it is her hope to remain in Open Education-Librarian positions for the rest of her career.
