Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and Their Impact on Academic Library Services: Exploring the Issues and Challenges

Abstract

2012 was a year of rapid change for education with the advent of MOOCs—Massive Open Online Courses—available for the world to use to learn for free. But what does this mean for the role of the librarian? How has the landscape in education changed, and what are the issues and challenges that librarians now face? This article reviews the position of libraries in the emergence of MOOCs and the role that a librarian could undertake within the research, production, and presentation of MOOCs.

KEYWORDS:

• MOOCs
• libraries
• copyright
• licensing
• digital literacy
• information literacy
• issues
• challenges

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I gratefully acknowledge Gill Needham (Associate Director Information Management and Innovation) and Jo Parker (Library Services Manager, Information Literacy) at The Open University for the feedback they provided on the final draft.

© Hannah Gore