Educational resources are not just available to learners. Their production and provision relies on
several elements in a chain that accomplishes the delivery to a learner. A book, for example, is not
just handed from the author to the reader; the delivery relies (at least) on a publisher, production
facilities with a printing plant, a distributor and a bookstore. In the digital age, this complex value
creation chain is challenged. But it would be naïve to think that when a teacher puts a resource
“on the web” for others’ there are no intermediary entities – private or public institutions – that
eventually are responsible for making this resource retrievable on the net. Now, the production
chain is less visible and the processing is experienced as seamless but from a larger view the
network behind the network decides, for example, if and how these resources will be found by
others, if and how they interconnect with other resources and services, how they eventually reach
a class and how changes or enhancements to an (open) resource will be traced back. Therefore,
the discussion about open educational resources and open education sometimes oversees the
relevance of these intermediary services and how they operate.