Atla Announces Award of Grants to Fund Creation of OER

Chicago, IL, November 04, 2020 —  Atla is excited to announce the award of grants to the Robert W. Woodruff Library of the Atlanta University Center Consortium and St. Mary’s University Blume Library to fund creation of open educational resources (OER). The goal of the Atla OER Grant Program is to encourage experimentation and innovation in finding new and potentially better and less costly ways to deliver learning materials to theological and religious studies students through OER. 

“We’re pleased to be able to offer our member libraries and librarians opportunities to innovate and collaborate with faculty at their institutions,” shared Gillian Harrison Cain, Director of Member Programs. “Atla’s award of funds to create OERs in religion and theology demonstrates our commitment to achieving our goal of facilitating access to quality open access resources.” 

Atlanta University Center Consortium has been awarded a grant to create a multi-format OER for the Interdenominational Theological Center graduate course “Sacred Texts in the Religions of the World: Vodun and Ifa.” St. Mary’s University has been awarded a grant to create a modular open textbook supplemented with primary source readings and community-created content for the undergraduate course “Foundations of Reflection: God.” 

“By supporting the development of OERs in religion and theology Atla is addressing a great need for open texts in this field,” explained Melody Diehl Detar, Instructional Design Librarian at Duquesne University and chair of Atla’s Scholarly Communication Committee. “These OERs will provide significant value by advancing scholarship through open access to content, offering unique pedagogical opportunities for instructors, and creating pathways for greater equity and social justice.”

Atla and the grantee institutions will both host the final OER and make them available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license. The grantees will report on their experiences participating in this program next summer at Atla Annual 2021. Upon review of the pilot program, Atla hopes to continue this program in 2021-2022 after a successful pilot year.

About Atla

Established in 1946 as the American Theological Library Association, Atla is a membership association of librarians and information professionals, and a producer of research tools, committed to advancing the study of religion and theology. Atla’s membership includes more than 800 individuals and libraries at academic institutions from diverse religious traditions and backgrounds. As a community of collectors and connectors, Atla works to promote worldwide scholarly communication in religion and theology by advancing the work of libraries and related information providers.

Press Contact

Christine Fruin, Scholarly Communication and Digital Projects Manager, +1 872.310.4200, cfruin@atla.com