A Survey of Open Educational Resources Practices in Health Sciences Libraries and Medical Education

Objective: The object of this study was to survey the practices for open educational resources (OER) in health sciences libraries. Methods: Participants were recruited via email to appropriate listservs and volunteers were interviewed by the paper's authors. Results: Five volunteers were interviewed. Most of the interviewees expressed that there is a willingness to use open materials at their institutions but support for creating open educational materials is lacking. The librarians discussed their involvement with OER at their libraries and institutions and provided advice for librarians hoping to support OER at their libraries and institutions. Conclusion: While health sciences libraries and medical faculty are open to OER, many factors hinder the adoption and creation of OER in medical education. The use of gold standard texts in medical education creates challenges in veering from those texts, as does the challenge of understanding copyright restrictions regarding OER and the lack of institutional support for faculty who wish to create OER. A shift to embracing OER in medical education will require a larger shift in the culture of medical education.