H.R. 6686 — No Cost Educational Resources Act of 2025

This section expands the purposes of the National Leadership Grants program to include, in addition to enhancing the quality of library services nationwide and providing coordination between libraries and museums, funding for open educational reading material courses. (As background, the program—funded from reservations under IMLS section 9131(a)(1)(B)—awards competitive grants, contracts, or cooperative agreements to libraries, library consortia, institutions of higher education, museums, and other entities for activities such as technology demonstration projects, preservation and digitization, disaster preparedness, and library-museum cooperation.) The section adds a new authorized activity—facilitating the adoption, adaptation, and creation of open educational reading materials (i.e., free digital texts publicly available to download and redistribute) and establishing more open educational reading material courses (i.e., science, technology, engineering, or math courses at institutions of higher education using only such materials as required readings)—and specifies grant requirements under new subsection (d), including: (1) applications describing librarian-led implementation, collaboration with STEM faculty and other institutions of higher education, and plans to review material quality; (2) priority for institutions enrolling high numbers of low-income or minority students that plan to assign faculty-librarian coordinators, leverage library resources for high-enrollment STEM courses, and incentivize faculty (e.g., monetary awards or dedicated time); and (3) a report to Congress two years after the first grant, covering grant numbers, effects on STEM course adoption, and student savings compared to courses requiring purchased readings.