Page:Wikipedia and Academic Libraries.djvu/21

8 from across the country to start creating content for Kyrgyz Wikipedia (Saadanbekov, 2013). In March 2011, the first “Week of Wikipedia” was held at five universities by the Movement of Kyrgyz Wikipedians. Each university committed to producing 500 articles in the first half of the year in exchange for Wi-Fi installation on their campuses. Kyrgyz Wikipedia has grown rapidly from 1,300 entries at the beginning of the project to 23,000 entries by the end of the project. Currently, the Kyrgyz version of Wikipedia has 80,271 entries (Kyrgyz Wikipedia, 2020).

The development of Kyrgyz Wikipedia coincided with the rise of a countrywide movement to promote OER. A series of events and activities was launched by education practitioners and institutions, with the development of Kyrgyz Wikipedia as an integral part of these (Roza Otunbayeva Initiative, 2015).

OER as a Starting Point

At AUCA, the faculty-library partnership around Wikipedia evolved from a pilot project aimed at implementing the use of OER. It has become common for academic libraries to pioneer OER at the institutional level through the raising of faculty awareness and providing needed support in adopting open-license materials (Crozier, 2018; Walz, 2015). OER and open educational practices can receive a great deal of support at di erent levels within an institution, but past experiences have shown that small-scale projects and tailored support for educators lead to more effective results (Jong et al., 2019). AUCA faculty and staff members chose to follow the above mentioned model, taking small steps in small teams to explore the potential of OER.

There were several reasons AUCA librarians chose to invest time in learning about OER. These included financial considerations with regards to the acquisition of multiple copies of textbooks, which is required by the government. Beyond the financial benefits, OER could be edited and customized by faculty to suit course needs and to reflect the local context. Furthermore, OER could have multiple applications across the university as different campus members were encouraged to adopt, edit, create, and share them.