For many, openness in education requires attention not only to the open licenses and permissions assigned to the products of intellectual labour, but also to the practices, infrastructures, and networks developed and maintained throughout the manifold knowledge production processes. While open textbooks and long‑form OER rightly occupy a large part of the open education landscape, their impact is often constrained by limited findability which effectively hampers reuse across institutions and platforms. Discoverability of open publications requires consideration not only of traditional editorial processes around the work’s content, but intentional care for metadata, hosting and distribution, aggregation, archiving, and usage monitoring. This panel positions metadata work not as a technical afterthought but as a core site of open practice, where intentional choices and commitments to open standards, community governance, and shared, not-for-profit community-led infrastructure can better support the long‑term sustainability of open knowledge. Drawing on collaboration between the LIBER Educational Resources Working Group, SPARC Europe, European university and library publishers, Pressbooks, and Thoth Open Metadata, this panel will demonstrate how academic libraries and university publishers can adopt open metadata workflows spanning the full lifecycle of open access and open educational books. Using examples from current pilots and planned integrations, the panel will explore how open ecosystems can be built around three interlocking elements: open-source publishing platforms such as Pressbooks; implementation of open dissemination and archiving workflows (high-quality, re-usable metadata) via not-for-profit open infrastructures such as Thoth Open Metadata; and the dissemination of open content to discovery and usage layers that connect books to readers, including aggregators, directories, usage monitoring systems, repositories, and library discovery services. The panel will provide a practical demonstration of how collaborations between university libraries, publishing programmes, and open infrastructures can embed open metadata practices within open publishing workflows. Doing this well requires easy-to-use open source tools that enable creators and publishers of open access monographs, edited collections, and OER textbooks to generate rich, machine-readable metadata without needing specialist expertise in database structures or complex specifications. Representatives from European academic libraries and university or library publishing programmes will show how they are integrating publishing platforms with an open and high-quality metadata framework via interoperable APIs provided through Thoth, and how these metadata records are then automatically exported into a multiplicity of formats incl. MARC, ONIX, KBART, and Crossref XML - all of which then foster findability and easy re-use via local catalogues, national repositories, and global open indexes. The panel will open with a short demonstration of an existing API-based workflow built entirely with open-source tools to support end-to-end open publishing. Panelists will then reflect on successes, tensions, and questions about e.g. how educational use cases might map onto standardised metadata fields and how metadata can remain aligned as content is revised, versioned, and remixed over time. By foregrounding this often invisible care work, the panel aims to show how shared metadata infrastructure can make open books more visible, reusable, and sustainable across diverse institutional contexts.

I am still pinching myself that I'm not back in the trenches for a fraught start of term. I've moved on a lot since last year, and the work keeps evolving. All the very best to all who are back for a new session. I had a busy end to my part-time consulting year! And then a useful chance to simply potter about and reflect. Had great fun watching World Cup too in Scotland and France. I am a few blog posts behind. Here is a quick look at what I’ve been up to: * **Holyrood Communications:** I had the privilege of speaking on the transformative role of AI in Education, exploring both the opportunities and challenges it brings for learners and teachers. Mainly how assessment needs to change. But have a close look at the presentation on skills you and learners need to develop to make the most of AI tools. * **#OER26:** Connected with the open education community to share ideas and insights on the future of open educational resources. I focused on the practical things that open education advocates and their organisations should be doing to be open. Extended blog to follow. * Very timely as **the Scottish Government has finally got behind Open Practice.** Caught up too over the summer with the team leading on this work. Worth a read - if I was still working at a public body or at an institutional level I'd be figuring out how we start the journey towards sharing more resources publicly with an appropriate open licence and discussing this with all stakeholders. The **#openscot** community and Association for Learning Technology have lots of experts on hand who could help. > * **Quality Systems:** Delivered a session for Northampton College on familiar territory of quality systems internal and external quality assurance for their engineering academic team. * **Île de Ré:** Balanced the busy schedule with a fantastic summer break on the French coast, enjoying the quiet beaches, cycling routes, food, wine, and plenty of sunshine (perhaps too hot this year). > > > > * **Glasgow Commonwealth Games:** Spent an unforgettable time volunteering on the ground, soaking in the vibrant energy of the events. Some memorable moments: the Ugandan team (on a rainy day) telling me how beautiful Scotland was in the autumn and being surprised it was summer. The Cook Islands team singing and playing their music on their hotel balcony each evening. Above all, working with a great set of volunteers and welcoming so many different people into the City of Glasgow. * **RSA Scotland:** Supported the Commonwealth Reception in Trades House of Glasgow, engaging in fantastic conversations with fellows and partners celebrating regional and international connections and handing the baton on to the Indian delegation. * **Mentoring** : Continued supporting senior leaders on driving change, leveraging digital tools while staying human, and leading authentically. If you role-play being a rotter, you risk getting stuck in that mode, and we have more than enough angry leaders in the world right now! Looking forward to ALTC in Cardiff, meeting new ALT Scotland Exec members, and supporting Instructure Canvas (including Canvas Con in November) and moving on a few other projects that will keep me occupied into the new year.

OER26 You and Open Workshop Joe Wilson , Lorna Campbell

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