We know from the literature on open educational resources that faculty awareness and institutional support are two barriers to widespread adoption, addressing these issues through trusted library networks is one strategy to impact change. Libraries are natural partners as they are already positioned to support all areas of the curriculum in higher-education. They have expertise in the subject areas they support, such that they can identify, vet, and thereby reduce the sometimes overwhelming number of materials that faculty consider for course adoption. Libraries have already demonstrated their excellence as a profession in this area through their support of materials for online education. With this new role promoting OER, libraries continue what they've always done in building quality collections, but now expanded to materials for the classroom, and with an eye for adopting a price agnostic approach. To support this work, LOUIS: The Louisiana Library Network surveyed faculty across the state over a two month period in 2016 to assist with developing the program goals and initiatives of their Affordable Learning LOUISiana project. Over 700 faculty participated in the survey, representing two & four year and public & private institutions of higher education. Faculty shared their perceptions of the suitability of OER for their courses, their levels of concern for textbook affordability, and provided insight into what strategies would persuade them to include OER in their courses. In addition to sharing results from this survey, a general discussion of how these results influenced the design of a program for library advocacy will be discussed. Topics covered will be aligning educational programming for librarians to build capacity on campuses, investigating library sponsored programming that directly engages faculty and instructional support staff, leveraging Open Access and Open Education Weeks, as well as developing partnerships and best practices within the library community.
