by Greg Argo
Quick Summary
Greetings! I’m the new Open Education and Affordable Content (OEAC) Librarian on the Cooperative Purchasing and Electronic Resources Services (CPERS) team. As the OEAC Librarian, I’m excited to draw on my experiences working together with people and technology to see how Minitex can best serve the purpose of helping libraries increase adoption of open education strategies across the state.
Greetings! I’m the new Open Education and Affordable Content (OEAC) Librarian on the Cooperative Purchasing and Electronic Resources Services (CPERS) team. My path to Minitex winds through various library types and roles. I've worked in law, public, special, and community college library environments, but for the last 15 years I have worked at academic libraries in course materials, electronic resource management, reference/instruction, cataloging, access services, resource sharing, and digital services. Recently I’ve participated in the development of the new Rapido resource sharing software with Ex Libris, and was an early adopter and proponent of their Leganto software. Using Leganto, my library supported affordable content initiatives by partnering with faculty to deliver course materials to students in our learning management system (LMS) using the library’s collections and services like acquisitions and digitization.
My role also includes saving libraries time and money by participating in cooperative purchasing activities with Anne Hatinen, Ann Kaste, and Tim Peters in CPERS. I will be directly involved in supporting collaborative acquisition and negotiation of e-resources; managing ordering and renewal processes; and ensuring access and delivery for library users in a collaborative environment. I’m looking forward to meeting a lot of library staff across the region and doing my part to make sure your users have access to the resources they need.
One through line in my work has been taking big ideas and figuring out how to work with people to put them into practice, whether that be building new consortial batch loading techniques for e-resources in MARCEdit; early attempts at developing LMS-embedded information literacy modules; bringing together institutional stakeholders to collaborate on a library-based, LMS-integrated course materials service; or partnering with a vendor development team and library partners to create new resource sharing and discovery software. I’ve also spent the last five years as a leader at the Ex Libris Users of North America (ELUNA) organization connecting software developers and library colleagues in the quest to build and improve systems that harness the latest technologies and are responsive to the needs of the library community.
As the OEAC Librarian, I’m excited to draw on my experiences working together with people and technology to see how Minitex can best serve the purpose of helping libraries increase adoption of open education strategies across the state. If you are working in or interested in this area, feel free to reach out and get in touch: argo0009@umn.edu. I would love to hear about your experiences with open education and affordable content.
