Meet the Libraries’ Open Knowledge Center

The Libraries has long been a leader in the quickly expanding field of OERs (open educational resources). Our Alt-Textbook program saves NC State students hundreds of thousands of dollars in textbook costs through the development of online teaching resources from freely available materials. Our Open Pedagogy Incubator helps faculty to fully implement multiple Open Pedagogy approaches in their courses. Our OPEN (Open Project Engagement Network) Incubator uses open principles to advance projects from idea to proof-of-concept. And our partnership with NC LIVE on the Open Education North Carolina (OENC) initiative helps spread OERs across the entire state.

Now, that leadership in all things “open” has led to a name change at the Libraries.

Formerly known as the Copyright & Digital Scholarship Center (CDSC), the new Open Knowledge Center (OKC) will serve as an incubator for communities, projects, initiatives, and programs that build on NC State’s strengths and leadership in public, open, and experimental approaches to research, scholarship, and education. 

Will Cross is now the Director of the Open Knowledge Center & Head of Information Policy. He has played a large role in the transformation of the CDSC as open initiatives have expanded at the Libraries. 

“NC State remains one of only a handful of colleges and universities to have a full time lawyer in the libraries available to support mission-driven scholarship and education,” Cross says. “We’ve adopted the language of ‘information policy’ in order to reflect the fact that we’re here to help not just with copyright but also many other areas of law and policy such as navigating terms of use in digital tools and resources like Twitch and YouTube as well as the implications for privacy and free expression when adopting research and teaching resources built on a model of surveillance capitalism.“

Cross’ team at the OKC has grown to gather a broader slate of interests, skills, and aptitudes. The renaming of the Center reflects the Libraries’ alignment with global shifts toward public and open science, open education and pedagogy, and public and digital humanities.

“The OKC continues to support and advocate for student success, especially through our long investment in the area of open education,” says Micah Vandegrift, Open Knowledge Librarian. “Adding to that, we intend to deepen our involvement in collaborations with researchers and scholars, focused on creating new knowledge and research products, be they articles and chapters or web-first projects. Ideally, the OKC will provide momentum to engaging work, regardless of whether the collaborator is a sophomore or an emeritus faculty member.”

In addition to Cross and Vandegrift, the Center also includes Scott Bailey, Digital Research and Scholarship Librarian, and Ashley Evans Bandy, a current Libraries Fellow. 

“The Open Knowledge Center will be a leader on campus for navigating the interdisciplinary, open future of knowledge production, working in partnership with Libraries and university colleagues,” says Senior Vice Provost and Director of Libraries Greg Raschke. “The Center will incubate and provide expertise in scholarly and research communities, policies, and initiatives, working to build more open, impactful, and equitable systems of global knowledge.”

For more about the Open Knowledge Center’s programs, visit https://www.lib.ncsu.edu/department/okc.