Melissa Chim is the Scholarly Communications Librarian with Excelsior University. She was previously the Reference Librarian and Archivist at General Theological Seminary. She has a Master’s in Modern European History from Queen Mary, the University of London, and an MLIS from St. John’s University with concentrations in academic librarianship and archives. She also serves as an adjunct instructor for courses on research and writing. Her publications include articles for Theological Librarianship and The Conversation, and she has appeared on the Shaye Ganam podcast as a historical consultant.
She first became interested in OERs as a member of the American Theological Library Association (Atla)’s Scholarly Communication and Digital Initiatives Committee. Melissa and her colleague Anne Silver won the Atla OER Invention Grant for 2021-2022, and their textbook, Living Archives: A History of the Center for Christian Spirituality, is now available on the Atla website. Her SPARC Fellowship capstone project is a conference presentation sharing her experiences winning the OER grant and discussing the benefits of OER for faculty and students. Her community resource is the slides from this presentation that can be adapted and remixed for a variety of discussions about open education.