Library is the new publisher: Establishing workflows for library-based open educational resource production programs in post-secondary institutions across Canada and the United States

As a response to increasing costs of textbooks for college students, post-secondary institutions are exploring new methods to make learning materials affordable for students. This has resulted in a surge of interest in the concept of open educational resources (OER), or freely accessible learning materials, the most prominent of which is the open textbook. Post-secondary institutions have begun to start their own OER production programs, often staffed by librarians and run through an institutional library. As the work that was traditionally done by publishers begins to move into the academic space, new OER coordinators are searching for answers for how to successfully run an OER production program. This report is an analysis of the workflows of six OER production programs run through the libraries of post-secondary institutions in the United States and Canada, and stands a record that can be built upon in the future in the efforts to formulate a standardized approach to running a successful OER production program using Pressbooks’ book production and distribution software.