BiblioBios: Mac Bean serving KU community as Open Education Librarian

From the city planner’s office to the Shulenburger Office of Scholarly Communication & Copyright, Heather Mac Bean’s positions may have changed drastically over the years, but the common goal of serving the public has remained the same. Heather became KU Libraries’ Open Education Librarian in August and just successfully led KU’s Open Education Week (March 5-10) recognition with a workshop on Pressbooks, the libraries’ open textbook creation and publishing platform, and the announcement of the 2023 Textbook Hero.  

As Open Education Librarian, Heather provides information and resources to the KU campus regarding open educational resources (OER), open education practices, Creative Commons licensing, and consultations on copyright. Heather is no stranger to KU Libraries as she spent over seven years as the Licensing & Rights Management Specialist in the Acquisitions & Resource Sharing Department. In her previous role, Heather reviewed licenses for electronic resources and helped negotiate deals with publishers, putting to use skills honed over 25 years in her previous career as a city planner in central Iowa. 

Originally from Omaha, Neb., Heather went to Iowa State University where she earned a bachelor’s degree in Community and Regional Planning and served various communities in Iowa. Nearing the mid-point of her professional career, Heather decided to take a look at other opportunities and an online library course piqued her interest.  

“I took reference as my first class, and I thought, ‘that’s the hardest fun I’ve ever had in my life,’” Heather said before joking that if she had taken a subsequent cataloging class first, history may have been different. 

Heather attended graduate school at the University of Iowa, where she earned a Masters in Library and Information Science and garnered her first library experiences working in the health sciences library for two years. She also worked in the law library as part of her practicum. Heather has been interested in open access and open education since graduate school, but her first professional library opportunity came in December 2014 in the familiar space of contracts and licenses with KU. Despite the different field, her background in city planning proved useful, and the licensing role included opportunities to learn about open access and open education. 

Much of Heather’s current role involves connecting instructors with open educational resources so students spend less on textbooks without compromising their grade. She is currently working to obtain the Certificate in OER Librarianship through the Open Education Network. The final result of this certificate program is to create an Action Plan focusing on a campus-wide outreach project. She also wants more people to know that the University of Kansas is one of the leading institutions in the area of open access. “KU Libraries have been at the forefront of the open access movement,” said Heather.  

Instructors who adopt or create OER aren’t limited to textbooks. OER can include workbooks, testing materials, and audio/video content. She wants to promote OER as a way to open up the world by using no-cost educational resources to help people learn and do research.  

“Students put a lot of money into an education, and the textbooks and other resources that go along with it also costs them so much money,” she said. “It's hard enough to pay for tuition.” 

Besides being a librarian, Heather enjoys yoga, running/walking, and listening to all kinds of music in her spare time. 

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