Library Guide: Open Educational Resoures (OER): Where to find OER?

Open Textbook Collections

Open Textbook Library
A collection of open textbooks managed by the University of Minnesota and their partners. Textbooks are quality checked, such that they are required to be either affiliated with an institution or adopted by multiple institutions.
OpenStax
Openly licensed and peer-reviewed textbooks supported and hosted by Rice University.
BCcampus OpenEd
The BC Open Textbook Project brings together a collection of textbooks built around British Columbia's most-enrolled subject areas.
Open SUNY Textbooks
Textbooks published by State University of New York libraries. Their open textbooks are authored and peer-reviewed by faculty, ensuring a high quality.
College Open Textbooks
A collaborative initiative of several higher education member institutions who contribute to peer-review. Although targeted to community colleges, many textbooks are also at an appropriate level for introductory first and second-year university courses.
Global Text Project
Originally seeded from the University of Georgia, Global Text Project contains open textbooks across a range of subject areas.

Pressbook Directories

Provides an index of 4,891 books published across 139 Pressbooks networks.

Textbook Affordability Project (TAP)

The purpose of the Textbook Affordability Project (TAP) is to promote awareness of textbook affordability issues create solutions that ensure all students have access to course materials that are affordable, up-to-date, and satisfy academic needs.

Open Repositories and Search Engines

Australasian Open Access Repositories
The Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL) maintains a list of repository contacts for repositories in Australian and New Zealand universities.
BASE: Bielefeld Academic Search Engine
This repository indexes academic resources - journals, institutional repositories, digital collections... that provide an Open Archives Initiative (OAI) interface and use OAI-PMH for providing their contents.
BCcampus OpenEd Resources
An open education project for post secondary institutions in British Columbia. It provides a directory listing of all major repositories to start your open textbook search.
CORE
(COnnecting REpositories), an Open University initiative, aims to facilitate free access to scholarly publications distributed across many systems. CORE provides access to millions of scholarly articles aggregated from many Open Access repositories.
De Gruyter Publishers
Independent academic publisher of OA books licensed as CC-BY-NC-ND. Submissions are subject to peer review and authors retain copyright.
Digital Commons Network
Aggregates free, full-text peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, dissertations, working papers, conference proceedings & more. Curated by university librarians and their supporting institutions worldwide.
Directory of Open Access Books
Contains a variety of open access books in diverse fields, including the sciences, social science & humanities. The directory is open to all publishers who publish academic, peer reviewed books in Open Access.
EDUCAUSE
A link and list of OER publications.
Humanities Commons
An MLA affiliated network that provides opportunities for people working in the humanities to make interdisciplinary connections.with open-access scholarship.
Intech Open
Subscribes to the Budapest Open Access Initiative and are members of OA publishing organizations. Books are submitted to and indexed by scientific databases.
Khan Academy
Hundreds of short educational videos covering many subjects; especially strong collections in science and math.
LibreTexts
An easy-to-use platform developed by faculty, students and scholars for construction, customization and dissemination of OER.
manchesteropenhive
The new home for all of Manchester University Press's Open Access content. All users have free access to books and journals published under a Creative Commons open access license.
Mason OER Metafinder (MOM)
This search engine from George Mason University is connected to 16 major OER repositories.
MIT OpenCourseWare
Online open textbooks organized by topic, from MIT. Mainly science and engineering based, but also has some management and language texts.
OAIster
Union catalog of digital resources from open archive collections. OAIster records are fully accessible through WorldCat.org as well as on the OCLC FirstSearch service.
OASIS (Openly Available Sources Integrated Search)
Developed in consultation with the State University of New York OER, this repository searches open textbooks, courseware & more. Can limit searches by CC licenses & faculty review.
OER Commons
A dynamic digital library/network for searching, browsing, and evaluating textbooks, lessons, videos and more, in OER Commons’ growing collection.
Open/Free Education Resources Google Search
The beta version of Google custom search engine for open/free educational resources.
Open Knowledge Repository
The World Bank's collection of open access resources, primarily in international economics but also including selections from related topics.
Open Learning Initiative (OLI)
Complete courses from Carnegie Mellon University conducted either face-to-face, online, or hybrid. See also:Open Learning Initiative at Stanford University; Open Learning at Harvard.
Open Michigan
The home for open resources at the University of Michigan. Provides information on expertise and services for OER, open data and open publications.
OpenStax CNX
If you're looking for OER that are packaged for use, OpenStax by Rice University is a good place to start. OpenStax specializes in creating peer reviewed textbooks and accompanying materials in a wide variety of fields (electrical engineering, music, psychology...)
Open Washington - Find OER
Winner of Outstanding Site 2016, this Washington Open Resources network provides a myriad of materials, licensing information, attribution of sources and faculty testimonials.
Orange Grove
Florida's collection of OER that are free for educational use but may be protected through various copyright statements associated with each resource. Check out the Florida Virtual Campus OER.
Project Gutenberg
Most books in Project Gutenberg are not protected by copyright and are available for download. More information for use with mobile devices can be found at MobileReader Devices How-To
Public Domain Books
List of best sites with free public domain books to download.
ROLL - Resources for Online Learning
Jointly launched by National University of Singapore Library and the NUS Centre for Instructional Technology. This is a consolidated list of online learning resources. Some may require payment.
Teaching Commons
Curated by librarians and faculty from leading colleges and universities, the repository brings together high quality open access materials including textbooks, course materials, lesson plans, multimedia & more.
Xpert
"XPERT (Xerte Public E-learning ReposiTory) project is a JISC funded rapid innovation project (summer 2009) to explore the potential of delivering and supporting a distributed repository of e-learning resources created and seamlessly published through the open source e-learning development tool called Xerte Online Toolkits."

Images and Photos

This list suggests resources or ways to find openly licensed or public domain images and photos for your teaching and learning, including your MOOCs.

Creative Commons Search
Access various digital media search services such as Google Images, Flickr, Europeana and Wikimedia Commons. Verify whether an individual work is available under a Creative Commons license before reuse.
Europeana
Offers access to millions of digitized items from European museums, libraries and archives. Search for the author or title, and in the left-side panel narrow results by file type (“text”), and by copyright (“public domain marked”).
Flickr
Home to tens of billions of photos and "... almost certainly the best online photo management and sharing application". To search for reusable images, in ”Advanced Search”, choose from the pull-down menu the type of license needed (e.g. "Any license", "Creative Common license", etc.)
Getty Images
Based in Seattle, Washington, Getty is a supplier of royalty free stock images, editorial photography, video and music for business and consumers. Getty's terms of use say that users can “only use embedded Getty Images Content for editorial purposes (meaning relating to events that are newsworthy or of public interest)”.
Google Image (Advance Search)
From the Google Image Advanced Search page, limit your search by "usage rights" (e.g. "Free to use and share, even commercially").
New York Public Library Digital Collections
For free images, select the "Search only public domain items" option to limit your results to no known copyright restrictions items. When browsing, turn on the “Show Only Public Domain” button in the upper left corner.
Openphoto
The Open Photo Project is a photo sharing platform created in 1998 by Michael Jastremski. Contributors offered their images free of charge under CC licensing terms and conditions which vary from image to image.
Photos Public Domain
Free stock photos, textures, images, pictures and clipart for any use including commercial.
Pixabay
Over 1 million+ high quality free images and royal free videos shared by Pixabay's talented community.
PIXNIO - free images
High quality copyright friendly images, not copyrighted and no restriction for their use. Images explicitly placed in the public domain, no "any rights reserved". Use it freely for any personal or commercial use.
Wellcome Collection
Find thousands of freely licensed digital books, artworks, photos and images of historical library materials and museum objects. All images are available for use under a Creative Commons license.
Wikimedia Commons
Online repository of free-use images, sound and other media files. Almost all content may be freely reused subject to certain restrictions and terms of use. Check the license of individual source for reuse.

Course Content and Learning Materials

Open Course Library
Contains a selection of syllabi and whole university courses by faculty from various institutions. Course materials are available to download and use for your teaching.
MERLOT II
An initiative by California State University. MERLOT II contains a variety of learning materials, such as case studies and course material. Recognized for its thorough peer review process, MERLOT has several discipline-related editorial boards which ensure quality of listed material.
OER Commons
A large collection of open materials from other repositories, including syllabi, lesson plans and full courses. Use the advanced search to filter by subject area, material type, and conditions of use. OER commons is a project by ISKME (Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education).
MIT OpenCourseWare
MIT's repository of all its courses made openly available. Find courses by MIT course number or department. As with other Creative Commons licenses, when adopting MIT material for your teaching, credit must be given to MIT and the faculty authour of the respective material.
Teaching Commons
Collects OERs drawn from the Institutional Repositories of various universities and colleges on the Digital Commons Network.

Open Journals

Academic Journals
A broad-based publisher of peer-reviewed open access journals covering art and humanities, engineering, medicine, social sciences, biological sciences, physical sciences and agricultural sciences.
BioMed Central
A pioneer of open access publishing for quality peer-reviewed journals such as BMC Biology, BMC Medicine, & BMC Series. BMC is expanding into the physical sciences, mathematics and engineering disciplines.
CORE
"CORE’s mission is to aggregate all open access research outputs from repositories and journals worldwide and make them available to the public".
Directory of Open Access Journals: DOAJ
DOAJ is a community-curated online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals. DOAJ is independent. All funding is via donations, 40% of which comes from sponsors and 60% from members and publisher members. All DOAJ services are free of charge including being indexed in DOAJ. All data is freely available.
Elsevier Open Access Journals
Explore a wide selection of open access journal titles that are available in this leading scientific database. The NUS Library also has a subscription to this database, which provides access to more scientific journal titles that are not openly accessible.
JURN
Since 2009, JURN's unique search engine provides access to free academic articles and books from selected university full-text repositories. Includes e-journals in arts, science, biomedical, business and law.
manchesteropenhive
The new home for all of Manchester University Press's Open Access content. All users have free access to books and journals published under a Creative Commons open access license.
OMICS International
Established in 2007 with the sole aim of providing a platform for Open Access to research information / scholarly journals pertaining to diversified fields of science and technology.
Open Library of Humanities (OLH)
A peer-reviewed open access, internationally supported, academic led and high quality multi-journal platform for higher level humanities.
Open Research Online
Journal articles, books, theses, and conference papers, and other published research from Open University, a UK based distance learning institution.
Oxford Open Journals
Titles participating in the Oxford Open scheme are broadly included in one of two open access models, either full or optional open access.
PLOS - Public Library of Science
Contains peer reviewed open access articles, focusing on biology and medical science. PLOS authors publish under the Creative Commons Attribution License.
PubMed Central
A free full-text archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature at the U.S. NIH / NLM Libraries. Refine your search to “Open Access” and check the license of individual article before reusing the content.
ScienceDirect Open Access
Search for Open Access articles from ScienceDirect.
Scientific Research Publishing (SCIRP)
SCIRP is currently publishing more than 200 open access, online, peer-reviewed journals covering a wide range of academic disciplines.
SpringerOpen
Includes peer-reviewed, fully open access journals across all areas of science. It ranges from very specialized titles to SpringerPlus, an interdisciplinary OA journal for all disciplines.
Wiley Open Access
Publishes authoritative peer reviewed open access journals across biological, chemical and health sciences. Journals are immediately freely available to read, download and share.

Films/Videos

Creative Commons Search
This offers convenient access to search services provided by other independent sites that provide images, audio, and video. CC has no control over the results that are returned. Hence look for results that are under a CC license
Critical Commons
A community of people who seek to promote the use of media in teaching. The materials posted here are mostly presented using Fair Use guidelines.
Khan Academy
Hundreds of short educational videos covering many subjects; especially strong collections in science and math.
The Getty Search Gateway
"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."
EngageMedia
An online video-sharing site focused on social justice and environmental issues in the Asia-Pacific.
Internet Archive Feature Films
Internet Archive's films, shorts, silent films and trailers are available for viewing/downloading.
Internet Archive Moving Image Archive
This library contains digital movies uploaded by Archive users which range from classic full-length films, to daily alternative news.
The Public Domain Review
"... the focus is on works which have now fallen into the public domain, that vast commons of out-of-copyright material that everyone is free to enjoy, share, and build upon without restriction".
Vimeo Creative Commons
The site has a clear explanation of the different Creative Commons licenses and how you can or cannot use the videos.
Wikimedia Commons
"Wikimedia Commons only accepts free content... that [is] not subject to copyright restrictions which would prevent them being used by anyone, anytime, for any purpose."
YouTube
An online video community that provides millions of originally-created videos for viewing. The key is filtering them to isolate the Creative Commons-licensed ones.
TED Technology, Entertainment, Design
TED is a nonprofit devoted to spreading ideas. The short and powerful TED Talks share ideas for free and licensed under Creative Commons. Check out the TED Talks Usage Policy as well as TED's offerings by topics . TED-ED is a new initiative of curated educational videos on "Lessons (plans) Worth Sharing" aimed at educators and students.
PBS Video
Offers a wide selection of TV shows, videos, films, documentaries from acclaimed PBS series for streaming online.