http://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification 720 https://escholarship.org/uc/uc_libraries_forum_2025_workshop/rss Recent eScholarship items from Critical Conversations and Workshops Wed, 1 Jul 2026 20:26:20 +0000 https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4kg293nq <p>Challenges have always surrounded OERs, today we are faced with even more challenges as we navigate a landscape of budget cuts, lack of grant opportunities, and attacks on DEIA. Amid this negative climate we are more than ever in a space to bring about something positive for our students in the UC system.</p><p>At UC Irvine, we recently completed a faculty incentive initiative to move course materials to open or library-licensed materials. We awarded three grants in as many years. However, in exploring this topic further we were able to see the vast work that the faculty are doing behind the scenes. More than half of the bookstore’s grid each quarter for the last fiscal year are courses with no required textbooks, and those noting their course uses open educational resources (OER) is slowly increasing.</p><p><strong>We are interested in hearing how other UC campuses approach affordability efforts and library-licensed course materials, including</strong>:</p><ul> <li>How does... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4kg293nq Thu, 26 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Carpenter, Nicole Cullen, Carrie Avila, Antoinette https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4281k3vf <p>Academic library workers are facing a test of our commitment to the core professional values with the alarming, widespread acts of U.S. government censorship and budgetary and legal attacks on higher education institutions and the national research infrastructure. This situation impacts the equitable exercise of intellectual freedom and freedom of expression in academic libraries, including the University of California Libraries, and in our campus and broader communities.<br><br>This critical conversation session will be an opportunity for UC library workers to discuss how to uphold our professional ethics and values as articulated by the American Library Association in the face of day to day challenges to research, publishing, teaching, and learning; the larger threats to scholarly inquiry, knowledge, and education; and questioning of efforts aimed at creating more inclusive, diverse, and equitable libraries and library related services.<br><br>As UC libraries weather shifting... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4281k3vf Thu, 26 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Schiff, Lisa Garzón Vargas, Carly