Open educational resources (OER) are teaching and learning materials that are freely available for others to use, adapt, and share. UBC has an ongoing commitment to OER as a way to reduce student costs and expand equitable access to course materials. This work is supported through initiatives such as OER Fund grants, collaborative support from the Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology (CTLT) and UBC Library, and recognition of open education contributions within the university’s teaching and promotion practices. If you are new to OER, Open UBC is a great starting point for exploring how OER are created and used at UBC.
Access and Preservation
A growing number of OER are available in cIRcle, which provides stable, long-term access to educational resources created at UBC. While cIRcle is not recommended for ongoing edits or interactive content, it offers a reliable “version of record” for OER. This makes it a useful complement to platforms such as Pressbooks, where resources may continue to be updated, by ensuring a preserved and citable version is available over time.
To further support discovery, a team at the Library has been working to enhance how OER in cIRcle are described. This work began as a pilot in 2024 and is now being integrated into ongoing operations. As part of this initiative, you may notice a brief “OER Description” added to the metadata of some records. These structured descriptions highlight key details such as resource type, subject area, and intended audience, helping instructors more effectively identify materials that match their course level and teaching needs. This additional context helps address some of the limitations of repository-based access by making materials easier to find and assess for reuse.
Getting Started
Explore recent additions to the UBC OER Series in cIRcle.
Are you a UBC faculty member who has developed an OER, and are interested in depositing a version to cIRcle?Review our Faculty and Staff Work page, where you can use the cIRcle Item Submission Form to get started with your submission.
Interested in integrating OER into your teaching or starting your own project? Explore Open UBC or reach out to the team at open.ubc@ubc.ca for a consultation.
Effective today, the UBC Library Ask Us website provides students, staff, faculty, alumni and guests with FAQs and a new form to report online access issues and engage with our team.
Library employees are encouraged to report online access issues through the Library Employee Help Desk, CS: Issues and Maintenance form.
Hello everyone, I’m Vanessa, the new Digital Repository Research Assistant at cIRcle for the Summer 2026 term. As a second year student in the UBC iSchool’s Master of Library and Information Studies program (MLIS), my main interest is working with digital repositories to support research transparency, replication, discovery, and preservation. I’m very happy to be a part of the cIRcle team, and super excited to nurture and engage my current knowledge.
My work this summer will include assisting with the deposit of digital content, updating cIRcle procedures and participating in user testing as cIRcle prepares to upgrade its version of DSpace, reviewing and enhancing metadata for existing items, and of course, contributing to cIRcle’s blog! Please look forward to hearing from me again in the coming weeks!
When attempting to access Taylor & Francis eBooks, users are encountering a Bad Gateway (502) error. This issue is currently affecting multiple institutions. OpenAthens is working with the publisher and platform provider to resolve the problem.
We have lost access to Cambridge University Press. Users will see a ‘503 Service Temporarily Unavailable’ error.
Users will see a red box pop-up saying ‘The organization you have selected has not submitted information to Cambridge University Press for their Shibboleth/Athens account. Therefore you cannot access Cambridge Core with this login.’
UBC Library is pleased to announce that we will be moving to a new Single Sign On (SSO) approach to Pitchbook. On the morning of Wednesday, March 11th , UBC users will be able to login directly to Pitchbook via the Library Website with their UBC CWL login. Users will no longer need to login multiple times or have to recreate Pitchbook accounts to access.
Our Library Pitchbook Resource Page will be updated with this new SSO login on March 11th. Please continue to use this Resource Page as your access point for Pitchbook.
I just want to give a quick thank you to the UBC Library and IT staff that worked hard to put this change in place. This should greatly increase the Pitchbook User experience at UBC.
Finally, I wanted to mention that Pitchbook has now put in place website security tools to protect against their website data from being mass downloaded. Please note that using Browser Extensions that have “Read and Change” permissions – such as translation browser extensions like Google Translate – will be flagged as website data downloading.
To be clear: Using “Read and Change” Browser Extensions when using Pitchbook will case your account to be blocked. Please disable these Extensions before using Pitchbook.
The University Archives website has recently been updated and content from the previous version is currently being migrated. During this transition, some pages or resources may be temporarily unavailable.
