International Journal of Open Educational Resources Volume 2, Issue 1, Fall 2019/Winter 2020 | Page 210

International Journal of Open Educational Resources
the OER, and developed a preliminary
workflow for the librarians and faculty
to create an initial table of contents and
identify content for migration to the
LibGuide. Following this meeting, the
librarians and faculty held a half-day
workshop, during which the Discovery
Services Librarian determined the
faculty’s level of comfort working with
OpenStax HTML, provided the faculty
with basic training on migrating and
editing content in LibGuides, and began
initial testing of migrated content.
During and after this session, the
faculty worked with the Champion and
Discovery Services Librarian to identify
and resolve several content migration
challenges. For example, the faculty
and Discovery Services Librarian initially
migrated content to the LibGuide
by cutting and pasting the text, images,
and equations directly from the Open-
Stax webpages. However, this method
converted the equations into SVG
images, rendering them so they could
not be copied, viewed by screen readers,
or easily edited following import.
This undermined the faculty’s need
for accessibility and ongoing editorial
control of the equations. Furthermore,
the presence of these images greatly
increased the number of HTML characters
required to represent the content
on the page, outstripping Springshare’s
65,000-character limit for Rich Text/
HTML fields. This complicated content
migration and risked interfering
with future editing because the HTML
would need to be spliced across numerous
content area fields on each page.
Through trial and error, the Discovery
Services Librarian and the faculty
resolved these initial migration
challenges, supporting the display of
complex OER content in LibGuides
(see Figure 2). After further experimentation
with the OpenStax content,
the Discovery Services Librarian determined
that the XML files OpenStax
provides for offline use could be modified
and uploaded in lieu of copying
and pasting the content directly from
the webpage. This method has the advantage
of importing the equations
in MathML format, which uses fewer
HTML characters and is easier for the
faculty to edit. Moreover, this method
allows the Discovery Services Librarian
to utilize the MathJax JavaScript library
via Springshare’s Guide Custom
CSS/JS feature to display the equations,
preserving accessibility and their ability
to be copied. Using the file manifest in
OpenStax’ offline file directory, the faculty
first identified which XML should
be used to populate each page in the
OER. The Champion and Discovery
Services Librarian then extracted the
XML files, removed any unneeded code,
batch updated the image source URLs,
and imported the modified XML into
the LibGuide. While the XML for some
pages still exceeded the 65,000 character
limit for Rich Text/HTML fields, the
overall reduction in characters made it
easier for the Champion and Discovery
Services Librarian to splice the code
into fewer fields with less disruptive
breakpoints.
To date, the Champion and Discovery
Services Librarian have completed
migrating the OpenStax content
to the OER LibGuide. By doing
so, they have freed the faculty to focus
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