Research Guides: Open Educational Resources: Finding OER

Open Textbook Collections

Top sites:

Open Textbook Network
Supported by the Center for Open Education and the Open Textbook Network, these books have been reviewed by faculty from a variety of colleges and universities to assess their quality.
OpenStax College
These freely available books are developed following traditional textbook publishing methods, including peer review, editorial support, and creation of ancillary content. These books are available in multiple formats (PDF, print on demand, on the Web) and are licensed to be revised and remixed by faculty who want create a custom solution for a course.
LibreTexts
All Libretexts libraries are accessible to everyone via the internet, completely free.
Lumen Learning
Linked through Salem State's Canvas online learning system, Lumen Learning offers enhanced OER content for lower costs than traditional textbooks in a variety of subjects and disciplines.

Other sites:

BC Open Campus Textbook Collection
This collection includes freely available texts written specifically for the BC (British Columbia) OpenTextbook initiative as well as books from other sources.
College Open Textbooks
The College Open Textbooks Collaborative is focused on driving awareness and adoptions of open textbooks. In addition to providing freely available textbooks, resources include providing training for instructors on adopting open resources, peer reviews of open textbooks, and links to online professional networks that support for authors of open resources.
The Directory of Open Access Books
Includes links to online books hosted in various locations, and includes a large selection of international textbooks.
Flat World Knowledge
Flatworld provides faculty with customizable books for a relatively low cost to students. Access to the content is primarily through their website. Flatworld is strongest in business. Many of their original books are available under a more open Creative Commons license, although newer books require students to purchase and use the Flatworld site.
InTechOpen
InTechOpen publishes more than 2,300 open textbooks and 6 journals in a variety of subjects that fall under the general heading of science, technology, and medicine. Good for finding resources in Computer Science, Occupational Therapy, and Healthcare Studies.
The National Academies Press
Unlike some of the open textbook initiatives these books are publicly available but not openly licensed. You can link to the content, and even link directly to specific pages. However, you cannot remix and redistribute the content.
Open Access Publishing in European Networks
The OAPEN Library contains freely accessible academic books, mainly in the area of Humanities and Social Sciences. OAPEN has books in multiple languages and covering a large variety of topics.
Saylor.org Bookshelf
This collection includes books written specifically for Saylor.org as well as the original editions of the FlatWorldKnowledge textbooks (subsequent editions are only offered for purchase).
The University of Minnesota Open Textbook Catalog
This site is a clearinghouse of links to books housed in various locations, including OpenStax, Saylor and others, with over 140 books. To be on the list, the books must be used by author's institution and by at least one other institution.

OER Repositories and Other Content Sources

Top sites:

MERLOT
MERLOT (Multimedia Educational Resource for Online Learning and Teaching) provides access to curated online learning and support materials and content creation tools, led by an international community of educators, learners and researchers.
OER Commons
A repository with a search tool that lets you specify level (college, graduate, adult, professional) and topic (education, math, English, etc.)
BCcampus: OER by Discipline Directory
The BCcampus Open Education OER by Discipline Directory lists a wide range of open educational resources organized by discipline. This directory is updated as new resources are identified.
Internet Archive
A non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, websites, and more. NOTE: They recently added the National Emergency Library, a temporary collection of hundreds of thousands of materials currently under copyright.
Project Gutenberg
A library of over 60,000 free eBooks, with a focus on older works for which U.S. copyright has expired.
Hathi Trust
HathiTrust is a partnership of academic & research institutions, offering a collection of millions of free, fully digitized books from libraries around the world.
TED Talks
An outstanding repository of topics in short videos
Mason OER Metafinder
A search engine from George Mason University Library that searches across OER content across 21 resources, including most of the resources listed above.

Other sites:

EDUTOPIA
Guide to OER aimed at K12, but many resources contain useful tips and links that can be used in Higher Education.
OpenStax: Connexions
A place to view and share educational material made of small knowledge chunks called modules that can be organized as courses, books, reports, etc.
Maricopa Center for Learning and Instruction (mcli)
Links to a number of discrete searchable repositories: the MLX contains faculty assignments, Teaching/Learning on the Web, Problem Based Learning and others... Unlike MERLOT, some of the repositories only accept submissions from Maricopa faculty. However, all of the databases are open for the public to use.

Open Educational Resources: Finding OER

Introduction

Open Textbook Collections

OER Repositories and Other Content Sources

Full Courses

Contacts