Celebrating a Decade of the Open Textbook Library: Student Duy Vo on Working for the Library

The Open Textbook Library (OTL) turns 10 in 2022! To celebrate the library’s role in bringing together a community committed to making higher education more equitable, we are featuring authors, faculty, librarians, students and others who have contributed to the Open Textbook Library through the years. This interview was conducted by Tonia Johnson, Digital Content Strategist at the Open Education Network.

Duy Vo is a senior at the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities, set to graduate this spring with a Bachelor of Science degree in Biochemistry from the College of Biological Sciences. Since 2020, Duy has worked for the Open Textbook Library (OTL) as a Student Admin, and as he prepares to leave, both he and the library are about to celebrate significant milestones.

Duy, congratulations on your upcoming graduation and thank you for your dedicated work supporting the OTL for the past two years. Before you head out with degree in hand, we’d enjoy hearing about the OTL from your perspective.

The OTL is a wonderful resource that helps students a lot by making open textbooks more accessible, and more credible in instructors’ eyes. I have seen reviews on textbooks being adopted by professors, and with more textbooks published and more reviewed, future generations will benefit when more professors apply this to their curricula.

The two most meaningful and rewarding things are, first, my relationship with the OTL members, especially my boss Karen, and second, the opportunity to solve a variety of unique problems. 

Being able to solve a variety of unique tasks and problems has been a rewarding experience for me. From database cleaning to making a new subject, a variety of tasks in the library have taught me a lot about adapting and creative thinking. They have also given me opportunities to engage more with activities and the inner workings of our library, which is super interesting. For example, I have learned very interesting stories about the original first books of the library, as well as how it used to be, by doing a big vetting project of our database.

Hmm…two that I have personally saved to read later are Chemistry of Cooking (CC BY NC SA) by Sorangel Rodriguez-Velazquez, and Music Theory for the 21st-Century Classroom (GNU) by Robert Hutchinson just because music and cooking are really of my personal interest.

A beautiful book that I have seen, and this is just my personal preference, is Design for Learning: Principles, Processes, and Praxis (CC BY NC). I think their design for the online version is very elegant. A particularly evoking book I have seen was The Primacy of the Public (CC BY NC) by Marcus Schultz-Bergin, because the cover was frightening when I saw it for the first time.

I want to get into medical school in 2023 after graduation. My experience in the library has given me invaluable experience in being meticulous, creative, and caring. These are all important qualities that can benefit any career, not just medicine. Communication skills and being thorough with every task is something that I have learned well over the course of my work here.

I think it is growing because of the more widely available help that authors can receive nowadays making open textbooks. Furthermore, tools like Pressbooks and LaTeX have enabled them to create very well-organized and accessible works.

From a demand standpoint, open textbook initiatives in general and our work specifically have made the use of open textbooks more widespread, which means different authors with different backgrounds and experiences are encouraged to contribute to the scene. Also, because of how easy it is to adapt materials and remix them, there have been a lot of resources for new authors to create their own unique material.

A student who joins the library does not necessarily need any prior library knowledge, but the most important thing is to always care about the job, the library, the author, and to be willing to think creatively of how to deal with different problems. Being careful and thorough in your work will definitely be a plus as well.

The OTL has come a long way, and has almost 1,000 books now. With such impressive growth, I wish that the OTL will continue on that trajectory with more members and more services added. I wish for it not only to have more books, but also to reach more students, professors, and authors, making open education a more prevalent concept in postsecondary education.

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Thank you for sharing, Duy, and our best wishes for success in your future endeavors!