The Lloyd Sealy Library would like to extend a warm welcome to our new Adjunct Open Educational Resources (OER) Librarian, Bruce Shenitz! Before joining John Jay, Bruce served as an Adjunct Reference Librarian at both Lehman College and Medgar Evers College (where he continues in that role). Bruce holds a Master’s of Science in Information and Library Science from Pratt University, and in his previous career was as a reporter-researcher at Newsweek magazine and executive editor of Out magazine. Over the pandemic, Bruce became increasingly involved in OER librarianship and is now bringing his expertise to John Jay. The sudden urgency to find and share freely-accessible research materials was felt across all CUNY campuses. At John Jay, that emphasis continues through Bruce’s collaboration with the Teaching and Learning Center (TLC). Together, the team is offering a faculty seminar that addresses the need for an OER curriculum across campus. As described by TLC, this summer’s Open Pedagogy Seminar will “introduce components of OER projects completed by John Jay faculty members in the social sciences, humanities, and STEM fields. Participants will engage in a collaborative learning environment to identify OER available for use in John Jay courses, explore principles of open pedagogy and practice developing assignments and activities for use in fall 2022 courses.” Please keep a lookout for a registration e-mail from TLC in the coming weeks. Utilizing free and openly accessible instructional materials is not only cost-efficient but also helps to enhance access to resources for online or hybrid students. However, one barrier to OER is a lack of faculty awareness. At John Jay, our team of librarians is facing that challenge head-on. Want to learn more about OER? Check out the library’s Guide to OER or contact Bruce Shenitz at bshenitz@jjay.cuny.edu. Kate Cauley Read more from the Spring 2022 issue of Classified Information, the Library's newsletter