Guide to Open Educational Resources (OER)

We recommend that you start here!

 Textbook Network (OTN): Hosted by the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Minnesota, OTN provides a growing catalog of free, peer-reviewed, and openly-licensed textbooks.

• OpenStax: Rice University’s initiative provides free, peer-reviewed textbooks that are written by experts. You can read the textbooks online, download a full-text PDF or order the low cost ($20-$40) print version.

• Open Textbook Library: Resources available from the Open Textbook Library from Limestone's Library (One Search Platform).
• BCCampus Open Textbooks: Open textbooks provided in a variety of digital formats from British Columbia.
• OER Commons: OER Commons is a" digital public library and collaboration platform," providing access to subject specific OER, collaboration opportunities and OER creation.
• MERLOT: MERLOT (Multimedia Education Resource for Learning and Online Teaching) is a free and open peer reviewed collection of online teaching and learning materials and faculty-developed services contributed and used by an international education community.

Finding Open Materials

Below is a list of some of the many resources available that provide open materials: 

• BCcampus OpenEd Resources: ​Wide variety of open textbooks from the British Columbia Campus, a consortium of Canadian institutions of higher education

• College Open Textbooks: A collaborative of twenty-nine educational non-profit and for-profit organizations, affiliated with more than 200 community and other two-year colleges.

• Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources (CCCOER): Provides links to OER Repositories, Open Textbooks & Journals, Digital Media, and more. CCCOER also provides a rich source of information and networking opportunities.

• Cool 4 ED - California Open Online Library for Education: The three State of California Higher Education Systems are working together to provide you with access to FREE and OPEN eTextbooks that everyone and anyone can use for teaching and learning.

• Creative Commons: Creative Commons is a global nonprofit organization that enables sharing and reuse of educational materials, provided that proper credit is given to the originators.

• GALILEO Open Learning Materials: Brings together open educational resources throughout the University System of Georgia, including open textbooks and ancillary materials.

• LibreTexts: ​LibreTexts provides access to OER resources and a platform for faculty to curate and compile resources. LibreTexts is based at UC Davis.

• Mason OER Metafinder: MOM provides a real-time federated search for OER content. The OER Metafinder performs a search across 18 different sources of open educational materials.

• MIT OpenCourseWare: Some of these online textbooks are open-licensed electronic versions of print books. Others are self-published online books, or course notes which are so thorough that they serve as an alternative to a conventional textbook.

• Open Course Library (OCL): OCL materials were created through Washington State Board for Community & Technical Colleges grant, but are freely shared to the world with a Creative Commons Attribution-only license (CC-BY).

• Open Educational Resources Commons: OER Commons is a growing collection of teaching, learning and assessing materials created by individuals or organizations who retains few, if any, ownership rights.

• Open Education Consortium: The Open Education Consortium is a non-profit organization that supports openness, collaboration, innovation and free distribution of educational materials.

• Open Oregon Educational Resources: Promotes textbook affordability for community college and university students, and facilitates widespread adoption of open, low-cost, high-quality materials.

• OpenStax: Rice University’s initiative provides free, peer-reviewed textbooks that are written by experts. You can read the textbooks online, download a full-text PDF or order the low cost ($20-$40) print version.

• Open SUNY Textbooks: Established by State University of New York libraries, this initiative publishes high-quality, peer-reviewed textbooks available to educational institutions around the world.

• Wikibook: The Wikibooks project was started in 2003, and has since become one of the largest free e-book websites in the world.