duPont Library: Open Educational Resources and Affordable Textbook Alternatives: Finding OER

Finding OER

OER can include full courses, textbooks, or any instructional materials-- including images, videos, or documents associated with teaching and learning. It is estimated that there are now more than 1.4 billion works licensed under various Creative Commons licenses (State of the Commons, 2017). With so many openly licensed materials available on the Web, how do you go about finding the right ones for your needs? You can find OER by using search engines, or by searching or browsing specific OER repositories.

Using Google Advanced Search

The Google search engine has an “Advanced Search” that lets you search by usage rights for content published to the Internet under an open license. To find this feature, you can go directly to the advanced search at http://www.google.com/advanced_search , or type in any search and then click on the gear icon on the right side of the screen to bring up the settings.

Once you are in the advanced search, the usage rights filter is near the bottom of the options presented:

A good choice for the usage rights is "free to use share or modify".

Using OER Repositories

Searching an OER repository can result in a faster and more productive search experience since the resources have been curated and organized into various categories including discipline, format, and license type. Most repositories also have either peer reviews or a rating scale where users have shared their opinion of the resource.

These are some of the best multidisciplinary sites for finding open textbooks and other OER materials for your classroom. All of the collections can be searched by subject. Our librarians are also happy to work with you individually to locate resources for specific courses.

OASIS
Developed at SUNY Geneseo's Milne Library, Openly Available Sources Integrated Search (OASIS) is a search tool that aims to make the discovery of open content easier. OASIS currently searches open content from 117 different sources. it's a great place to start your search!
OER Commons
OER Commons is a public digital library of open educational resources. Provides a fully searchable catalog including hundreds of open textbooks for use in higher education.
Galileo Open Learning Materials
GALILEO Open Learning Materials brings together open educational resources throughout the University System of Georgia, including open textbooks and ancillary materials.
Mason OER Metafinder (MOM)
The OER Metafinder launches a real-time, simultaneous search across 22 different sources of open educational materials as you hit the Search button. This tool is not recommended for the beginning searcher, because the sheer number of results retrieved can be overwhelming.
MERLOT
The MERLOT collection consists of tens of thousands of discipline-specific learning materials and exercises, created by an international community of educators, learners, and researchers. All the materials in MERLOT are reviewed for suitability for retention in the collection, and many undergo the extensive peer review for which MERLOT is famous.
OER Resource Repository
Open Washington has collected resources by category with the intent of making the search process more efficient and effective. Hover over a resource tile for additional information about the resource.

OpenStax
OpenStax is a nonprofit educational initiative based at Rice University. They publish high-quality, peer-reviewed, openly licensed college textbooks that are free online and low cost in print. OpenStax textbooks are being used in 48% of college and universities in the U.S. and in over 100 countries.
Open Textbook Library
Hosted by the University of Minnesota and supported by the Open Textbook Network, the Open Textbook Library is a collection of textbooks that have been funded, published, and licensed to be freely used, adapted, and distributed. These books have been reviewed by faculty from a variety of colleges and universities to assess their quality and can be downloaded for no cost, or printed at low cost.
BC Campus OpenEd
BCcampus provides a collection of open textbooks aligned with the highest-enrolled subject areas, as well as a selection of books for trades, technology, and skills training. Books can be browsed by subject area, and many are faculty reviewed.
Textbook Equity
Creator, publisher, distributor, and seller of open textbooks and ancillary materials to college-level students. PDF versions are free. Prices for print versions range from U.S. $19.95 to $59.95 (average = $39.00) plus standard tax and shipping charged by the printers.

MIT Open Courseware
Massachusetts Institute of Technology is one of the forerunners in open courseware, making "virtually all MIT course content" available online for public access.
Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiatives
Carnegie Mellon offers courseware online, in addition to complete courses as well. Its mission is to improve higher education by offering such resources online.
Open Course Library
The Open Education Consortium in collaboration with MERLOT offers a search engine on OER (Open Educational Resources), including courses.
Saylor Academy
Saylor Academy is a nonprofit organization that offers nearly 100 full-length, free and open courses at the college and professional levels.
Open Yale
Each course includes a full set of video lectures accompanied by other course materials such as syllabi, suggested readings, and problem sets.

LINK: Open Educational Resources by Discipline

A curated list of resources from the California Community Colleges Open Educational Resources Initiative.

If you know of other Open Educational Resources not listed here, we invite you to send them to us so we can include them here.

English

EmpoWord: A Student-Centered Anthology & Handbook for College Writers
EmpoWord is a reader and rhetoric that champions the possibilities of student writing. The textbook uses actual student writing to exemplify effective writing strategies, celebrating dedicated college writing students to encourage and instruct their successors: the students in your class.
Writing Commons
The encyclopedia for writers, researchers, and knowledge workers.
Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing
A book series containing peer-reviewed collections of essays from different writing teachers in the field. The authors present their unique views, insights, and strategies for writing by addressing the undergraduate reader directly.

History

The American Yawp: A Massively Collaborative Open U.S. History Textbook
Over three hundred academic historians—scholars and experienced college-level instructors—have come together and freely volunteered their expertise to help democratize the American past for twenty-first century readers.
The Avalon Project
An actively growing collection of several hundred primary source texts (in translation where necessary) dealing with law, history, and diplomacy from the ancient world to the present, with emphasis on European and United States history from the 18th through 21st centuries.
Digital Public Library of America
The DPLA brings together books, images, historic records, and audiovisual materials from contributing universities, public libraries, museums and other public-spirited organizations in the United States that have digitized materials, in a single platform and portal, with the aim of providing open and coherent access to our society’s digitized cultural heritage.

Psychology

Noba Collection
Noba provides high-quality, flexibly structured textbooks and educational materials related to psychology.

Language Learning

Acceso
The University of Kansas Collaborative Digital Spanish Project (Acceso) is an open-access, digital learning environment designed to promote the acquisition of Spanish and the development of cultural understanding of the varied groups of people who share Spanish as a common language.
COERLL
The Center for Open Educational Resources & Language Learning (COERLL) produces resources to help improve the teaching and learning of over 20 foreign languages.

Math and Science

American Institute of Mathematics
The American Institute of Mathematics (AIM) seeks to encourage the adoption of open source and open access mathematics textbooks. The AIM Editorial Board has developed evaluation criteria to identify the books that are suitable for use in traditional university courses and maintains a list of approved textbooks which have been judged to meet these criteria.
The ChemCollective
Provides scenario-based learning activities designed to provide interactive, engaging materials that link chemistry concepts to the real world.
Encyclopedia of Life (EOL)
The Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) is an international effort, led by the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History, to raise awareness and understanding of living nature by providing free, open, multilingual, digital access to trusted information on all known species.
Health Education Assets Library (HEAL)
A collection of over 22,000 freely available digital materials for health sciences education.
InTechOpen
Scientific, peer-reviewed;Open Access ebooks.
LibreTexts
Libretexts is an online open system for distributing educational materials with over 5 million page views per month. Covering geophysics, chemistry, physics and more, it offers a platform for authors and users including faculty and students to access curated educational materials. In addition to "written" materials Libretexts provides access to simulations and demonstrations that are relevant.
National Science Foundation Multimedia Gallery
Images, audio, and video files for use by NSF employees, members of the media, university staff, teachers and the general public for personal, educational and nonprofit/non-commercial use.
PhET Interactive Simulations
The PhET Interactive Simulations project at the University of Colorado Boulder creates free interactive math and science simulations. PhET sims are based on extensive education research and engage students through an intuitive, game-like environment where students learn through exploration and discovery.
Open Textbook Store
Collection of freely available open textbooks for download, online reading, and sharing.

Jessie Ball duPont Library

Open Educational Resources and Affordable Textbook Alternatives

Find Similar but Open Materials

Finding OER

Using Google Advanced Search

Once you are in the advanced search, the usage rights filter is near the bottom of the options presented:

A good choice for the usage rights is "free to use share or modify".

Using OER Repositories

These are some of the best multidisciplinary sites for finding open textbooks and other OER materials for your classroom. All of the collections can be searched by subject. Our librarians are also happy to work with you individually to locate resources for specific courses.

LINK: Open Educational Resources by Discipline

If you know of other Open Educational Resources not listed here, we invite you to send them to us so we can include them here.

English

History

Psychology

Language Learning

Math and Science