In Louisiana, OERs have recently become a strategy used by the state legislature to address the rising cost of higher education. This process began with advocacy work led by LOUIS: The Louisiana Library Network, the statewide consortium, and directed at the Board of Regents, the governmental body charged with planning, coordinating, and budgeting public higher education in the state. The Regents provided funds to LOUIS that have allowed the consortium to build capacity and infrastructure needed to support the development of OERs in the state.
LOUIS used funds to launch scalable programs and easily adaptable solutions. Using a train-the-trainer model, they quickly built capacity at universities and colleges in the state. Then, they created a structure to provide funds and support for individual academic libraries to begin developing the OER culture locally. Local institutions were able to apply this model to the degree to which they had the capacity and interest to support it. The legislature-to-library-consortium-to-university model has allowed multiple stakeholders take ownership of an element of the project and apply leadership at their level while working towards a shared success in the state.
