Elizabeth Speer is an innovative wayfinder committed to efficiency in library operations and resource access through clear procedures, policy implementation, and personal interactions and collaborations with university partners. She currently serves as the Electronic Resources & Acquisitions Librarian for Gibson D. Lewis Library at The University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth. As such, she is responsible for the library collection in digital and print formats with a current focus in DEI and OA, copyright, contracts, and inter-library loan processes and policies. Prior to her current position, Ms. Speer spent a decade working with first generation and non-traditional community college students in her role as Librarian and academic liaison where she quickly learned the value of open educational resources. Ms. Speer earned her MLS from Texas Woman’s University and her M.Ed in Curriculum & Instruction from Tarleton State University.
As a SPARC Open Education Leadership Fellow, Elizabeth’s capstone project entitled Be Open to OER focused on the creation of a libguide to support the new efforts of locating and implementing OER at The University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth. The guide explains the resources available through and legal requirements of the state of Texas while highlighting relevant repositories that contain medical related open educational resources. The guide also firmly established the library’s current role and policies in regards to OER across campus. Due to the requirements of the capstone project, UNTHSC’s Lewis Library was able to get an exception to campus copyright policies in regards to library created resources which allows for them to be licensed under a CC-BY-NC creative commons license.