Open Educational Resources as Remedy: Lessons from Community College Librarians in Applying Diffusion of Innovation<!--EndFragment-->

Open educational resources (OER) are increasingly employed at community colleges to ease students’ college material costs and bridge equity gaps. As we have learned from the study, the adoption rate of OER at colleges is largely spearheaded by and dependent upon the work of librarians. Drawing on interview data from a larger research project (Sirgebayeva et al., 2024), this qualitative study elevates librarian experiences to highlight how the Diffusion of Innovation Theory (Rogers, 2003) explains the social process that can hinder or strengthen OER implementation, namely elevating the relationship between change agent librarians and opinion leadership on campus. In the context of this study, the community college is the bounded social system, and OER is the innovation. Results from the interviews emphasize the relative influence of social-system characteristics on the adoption of OER.