Affordable Course Materials
A guide for exploring course reserves, electronic resources, and OA/OER
Find Open Textbooks
- California Open Online Library for Education (COOL4ED)A project created and overseen by members of the three higher education systems in California (CCC, CSU, UC), "Cool 4 ED" provides access to free and open textbooks for use in lower division courses. While still in production, when completed, COOL4Ed will contain peer-reviewed books textbooks for 50 courses!
- Openly Available Sources Integrated Search (OASIS)Openly Available Sources Integrated Search (OASIS) is a search tool that aims to make the discovery of open content easier. Developed at SUNY Geneseo's Milne Library.
- Open Textbook LibraryA curated collection of over 170 high quality open textbooks, many of which are peer-reviewed.
- Openstax CollegeA growing collection of peer-reviewed textbooks in the sciences, social sciences, and humanities. Openstax is a nonprofit initiative of Rice University.
- LibreTextsA popular non-commercial platform for students, faculty, and outside experts to work together to build freely available open education resources (OER). Initiated at the University of California, Davis.
- Milne Open Textbooks (SUNY)Milne Library Publishing at SUNY Geneseo manages and maintains Milne Open Textbooks, a catalog of open textbooks authored and peer-reviewed by SUNY faculty and staff.
- Grand Valley State UniversityA small but growing collection of open educational resources authored by faculty at GVSU and hosted by the university's open-access repository, ScholarWorks@GVSU.
- British Columbia Open Textbook ProjectA Canadian collection of higher education textbooks in the fields of Arts, Business, Health, Science, Social Sciences
- Writing Spaces Open Textbook ChaptersA book series comprising peer-reviewed collections of essays on issues specific to writing.
- WikibooksHosted by the Wikimedia foundation, Wikibooks is an open content textbook collection spanning a variety of reading levels and disciplines.
- Open Book PublishersUK publishing imprint that provides free online access and low cost formatted and print access to titles with a special emphasis on humanities, digital humanities, and social sciences.
- BoundlessWhile not an open resource, Boundless provides low-cost customizable textbooks and supporting content, including assessment tools and analytics, in a wide array of disciplines. The cost is $30/student and student access to all materials never expires.
- Open Textbooks for EngineeringA listing of open textbooks, maintained by the Engineering Library Division of the American Society for Engineering Education.
What are Open Educational Resources?
Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching, learning, and research materials that are either (a) in the public domain or (b) licensed in a manner that provides everyone with free and perpetual permission to engage in the 5R activities.
- Retain – make, own, and control a copy of the resource
- Reuse – use your original, revised, or remixed copy of the resource publicly
- Revise – edit, adapt, and modify your copy of the resource
- Remix – combine your original or revised copy of the resource with other existing material to create something new
- Redistribute – share copies of your original, revised, or remixed copy of the resource with others
(From Creative Commons)
This LibGuide seeks to provide instructors, students, and staff access to a variety of OAR/OER resources and search tools in order to assist our campus community in mitigating high course materials costs to increase equity and access in higher education.
- JISC-Open Educational ResourcesAn explanatory guide on Open Educational Resources including myths, evaluation, and learning and teaching considerations.
- OER Tutorial-Algonquin CollegeA detailed tutorial covering OER, copyright, and Creative Commons licensing from Algonquin College in Ottawa, Canada.
- An Open Education ReaderA collection of essays on open education compiled by David Wiley. Dr. Wiley, an expert in the field of open education, is the Chief Academic Officer of Lumen Learning and adjunct faculty at BYU.
- Open Education HandbookThis Wikibook on Open Education continues to evolve as the community contributes to it. The resource provides information on terminology, software, case studies, and key issues in open education.
- Writing an Open Textbook: Is it Worth It?Tony Bates, an expert in open and distance education chronicles his experience in creating an open textbook and determines that it was well worth the effort.
The Impact of a Free Book
Open resources and repositories
- Internet ArchiveOpen access to a multitude of digital objects and collections in a wide array of formats including books, videos, audio recordings, and web pages.
- Open LibraryOpen Library, an initiative of the Internet Archive, is "an open, editable library catalog, building towards a web page for every book ever published." The resource is entirely open--from software to data to documentation. Individuals are encouraged to contribute!
- Project GutenbergProject Gutenberg offers over 46,000 free ebooks in epub and kindle formats for download or to read them online. There are many classic novels in the collection.
- Open Humanities PressAn international, scholar-led open access publishing collective with a focus on humanities disciplines.
- Digital Public Library of America8,007,019 items from libraries, archives, and museums, as well as numerous apps to enrich the discoverability and use of the collections.
- MERLOT IIAdministered by the CSU, MERLOT houses tens of thousands of learning objects and tools for building your own resources. The collection includes books, quizzes, exercises, labs, assessments, and more.
- OpenStaxOpenStax textbooks.
- Khan AcademyView video modules in a wide array of disciplines. It is necessary to create a free account to use Khan Academy.
- MIT OpenCourseWare"MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) is a web-based publication of virtually all MIT course content. OCW is open and available to the world and is a permanent MIT activity."
- Carnegie Mellon University-Open Learning Initiative"The Open Learning Initiative (OLI) is a grant-funded group at Carnegie Mellon University, offering innovative online courses to anyone who wants to learn or teach. Our aim is to create high-quality courses and contribute original research to improve learning and transform higher education."
- Ubiquity PressOpen access publisher of peer-reviewed academic journals, books and data. Ubiquity's publications include titles in disciplines less well represented in open access publishing, such as archeology and anthropology.
- Open Library of Humanities"The Open Library of Humanities (OLH) is a charitable organisation dedicated to publishing open access scholarship with no author-facing article processing charges (APCs). We are funded by an international consortium of libraries who have joined us in our mission to make scholarly publishing fairer, more accessible, and rigorously preserved for the digital future."
- OAPENBoth a collection of open access publications and a publishing platform with a focus on social sciences and humanities.
- Wikimedia Commonsa collection of 80,796,630+ freely usable media files to which anyone can contribute
Open Images and Media
- Calisphere This link opens in a new windowCalisphere provides free access to California collections of photographs, documents, letters, artwork, diaries, oral histories, films, advertisements, and musical recordings, digitized and contributed by California universities, libraries, and museums. The content is publicly available for research, teaching, and private study.
- WorldImages Kiosk This link opens in a new windowWorldImages Kiosk is a searchable image database created by faculty, staff and students in the CSU system. It contains images from a wide variety of fields, is global in coverage and includes all areas of visual imagery. Images are licensed for non-profit educational use with attribution (CC BY-NC 2.5).
- Flickr: Creative CommonsSearch here to find Flickr photos that have been licensed under a Creative Commons license. Click on the image license link to learn more about the restrictions for an individual image.
- Google Image Search (Open License)From this Google Advanced Search page, select the appropriate search parameter from the "usage rights" drop down menu.
- Getty Open Content Program"The Getty makes available, without charge, all available digital images to which the Getty holds the rights or that are in the public domain to be used for any purpose. No permission is required."
- Wellcome Library imagesA major resource for medical, biomedical, and social history images, both historical and contemporary, Wellcome Images contains over 170 000 images, all available for use under a CC license.
- Open content-Metropolitan Museum of ArtPlease see the link to learn how to determine which of the digital images in the MET's collection are open access.
- UbuwebA vast resource for avant-garde poetry, art, film, video, and audio
- New York Public Library Open Digital Collections"NYPL Digital Gallery provides free and open access to over 800,000 images digitized from the The New York Public Library's vast collections, including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints, photographs and more."
- Europeana30+ million digital objects from Europe's cultural institutions. Search results can be limited to those with non-restrictive licenses for reuse.
- Freer | Sackler Asian art imagesThe Smithsonian Freer and Sackler galleries have digitized more than 40,000 images from their collections of Asian art, most of which are available in high-resolution and free of copyright restrictions for noncommercial use.
- New Old StockA source for Creative Commons licensed vintage stock photographs.
- UnsplashA source for openly licensed stock photographs.
- LibreStockA search engine for Creative Commons photos