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Hi The question "what is an OER?" has come up again a few times recently. I'm organising a session for the jisc conference about using open content/data/resources and I was asked to define the difference between open educational resources, open data and open content, from the point of view of the user. Imagine. Someone accesses some content on the web, and they see that it has an open licence on it, so they know they can use it. Hopefully they can also see who created it. They know it is open and they know something of its provenance. It may or may not matter to them whether it comes from a university. It might be numbers-based or text-based or multimedia. It might be downloadable, it might not be. The point is it's useful and usable. Does it matter whether we call it an OER or open content or open research data? Surely they are supply-side terms that relate to the workflows, policies and ethos of making certain types of content open? They are meaningful terms in that they describe what's happening on the supply side. But the potential user doesn't need a label for the content: they just need to understand what it is and how they can use it. Surely the point of all this is for academics to contribute to a rich layer of content and interaction on the web, openly available wherever it makes sense to do so My thinking is that as projects and practitioners "doing" OER, we should be very careful that we don't get pulled into definition wars. Clearly saying to users that a resource is openly licensed is very important. Giving it a label of OER? Less so. End of thought for the day! Amber Thomas Programme Manager, Information Environment Team, JISC Innovation Group JISC Executive, University of Bristol 2nd Floor, Beacon House, Queens Road, Bristol, BS8 1QU Email: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> Website: www.jisc.ac.uk<http://www.jisc.ac.uk/> Skype: amber_thomas Mobile: +44(0)7920 534933