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Librarians who find themselves in the role of content creators may wonder how to license their work. Over 5,000 institutions in the United States use LibGuides as their preferred subject guide content management system, with over 120,000 license holders around the world. Licensing your resources under Creative Commons can be as simple as using the license chooser to create a machine-readable icon for your site or LibGuide.

There are hundreds of LibGuides on library websites about Creative Commons alone. Use Google to search for LibGuides about Creative Commons and flip through the resources found by subject librarians on the issues of Creative Commons and copyright.

Final Remarks

Openness in education means more than just access or legal certainty over what you are able to use, modify, and share with your learners. Open Education means designing content and practices which will ensure that everyone can actively participate and contribute to the sum of all human knowledge. As educators and learners revise others’ OER and create and share new OER, accessibility should always be on your design checklist.

5.6 | OPENING UP YOUR INSTITUTION

This section discusses how educational institutions can support open education content, practices, and community with policy.

Educational institutions around the world are trying to figure out how to support their educators, staff, and learners in using, revising, and sharing OER in the context of new Open Education practices. How can educational leaders use various policy tools to support and promote Open Education?


 * Consider if and why you need a policy to accomplish your Open Education goals
 * Understand the menu of Open Education policy options
 * Assess your existing institutional policies
 * Understand how to develop an institutional open policy