Name: Sweden Continues the Business: Reuse and International Collaboration for a New National Platform for OER
Start: 2026-10-07T12:25:00-0400
End: 2026-10-07T12:55:00-0400

All sessions are available online except round tables, special activities, and workshops.

Sweden Continues the Business: Reuse and International Collaboration for a New National Platform for OER

Wednesday October 7, 2026 12:25pm - 12:55pm EDT

6 DR4

ID: 33866

Open Educational Resources (OER) have long been promoted as a key mechanism for widening access to knowledge and strengthening education as a public good. Yet, in many national contexts, OER adoption has remained fragmented, dependent on local initiatives, individual champions, or short-term projects. In Sweden, this situation is now undergoing a significant transformation: OER are increasingly recognized as a shared national responsibility—“everybody’s business”—supported by emerging infrastructure, policy alignment, and cross-institutional collaboration (Pareigis, 2024).This session presents the development of Sweden’s new national platform for OER discovery and reuse, marking a shift from isolated institutional efforts toward a coordinated ecosystem. Central to this initiative is the implementation of a national aggregation service built on OERSI (Open Educational Resources Search Index), an open-source infrastructure designed to federate metadata across repositories and enable scalable, interoperable OER discovery (Klinger et al., 2023). By building on OERSI, Sweden aligns its national approach with international standards and practices, while leveraging an existing, community-driven technological framework—an approach previously explored in earlier OEGlobal sessions on federated OER infrastructures.The session will outline the strategic, technical, and organizational dimensions of establishing this national platform. It will address key questions such as: How can national infrastructures support local OER practices without centralizing control? How can serendipity (Busch, 2024) be fostered and which role did it play in the implementation of the platform? How can interoperability and metadata quality be achieved across diverse institutional repositories? Participants will gain insight into how Sweden’s higher education sector has mobilized around shared goals, including policy developments, national coordination mechanisms, and collaborative workflows for metadata aggregation and quality assurance.Positioned within the broader theme of OEGlobal 2026—“innovating open practices to uphold knowledge as a public good” —this session highlights how national infrastructures can serve as catalysts for systemic change. It demonstrates how open technologies like OERSI can enable not only technical interoperability but also cultural shifts toward openness, shared ownership, and long-term sustainability of OER.Key takeaways for participants include: (1) a practical understanding of how to design and implement a national OER platform using federated, open-source technologies; (2) lessons learned from cross-institutional collaboration and governance in a national context; and (3) insights into how aligning policy, infrastructure, and community engagement can accelerate OER adoption at scale. The session will be relevant for policymakers, library and IT leaders, open education practitioners, and researchers seeking to move from project-based OER initiatives to sustainable, system-level integration.By sharing Sweden’s experience, this session contributes to the global conversation on how to build resilient OER ecosystems—demonstrating that when supported by shared infrastructure and collective commitment, OER can truly become a public good.

Speakers

Jörg Pareigis

Director of Library, Karlstad University, Sweden

Director of Library including the Centre for Teaching and Learning at Karlstad University, Sweden. Open education advocate and co-organizer of Open Networked Learning www.opennetworkedlearning.se.

Axel Klinger

Chief Technology Officer, Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB)

Axel Klinger is Chief Technology Officer at Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB) where he leads the development of innovative software products and service offerings and develops and implements technology strategies for TIB digital services with focus on Open Science, Open Education... Read More →

Wednesday October 7, 2026 12:25pm - 12:55pm EDT
6 DR4 MIT Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge MA 02139 USA

Presentation

Speaker Modality Online
Track Hacking the Open Ecosystem and Praxis for the Public Good

Tickets

Success you have shared X tickets.

OEGlobal 2026

Jörg Pareigis

Axel Klinger

Get help with the event

Success you have shared X tickets.

OEGlobal 2026

Jörg Pareigis

Axel Klinger

Sign up or log in to save this to your schedule, view media, leave feedback and see who's attending!

Get help with the event