Promoting Open Educational Resources Through Library Portals in South African Universities

Abstract

In the South African context, there is still a lack of development of OER, and it is not well noted if library portals are a relevant place for hosting OER. There is a significance need for further scientific investigation about the appropriate channels of hosting OER in library portals. To further investigate the problem, this study opted for website content analysis to determine if library portals within the academic libraries accommodate OER in their portals. Out of 26 Institutions, so far only three institutions have accommodated OER in their repositories. This study concludes that policymakers and academics should play a significant role in engagement in promotion of OER to higher education institutions' digital libraries. This chapter concludes that library portals should strive to keep up with international initiative of openness. This study recommend that all South African universities and their academic library portals should have a common OER TAB (space) within the institutional repository.