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Open Educational Resources

Learn about the potential impact of open educational resources (OER) on student engagement, and how to adopt, adapt and create your own for use in the educational environment

Start Here - Pressbooks Directory

Why start at the Pressbooks Directory?

The Pressbooks Directory is an index of thousands of public "books" published across dozens of PressbooksEDU networks. When Pressbooks uses the term "book" they actually mean a website, with a unique URL. So consider a book on the Pressbooks Directory as an electronic resource - it can be any length, and it can be edited, based on the copyright license.

When you find a resource that you think will work for your information needs, based on the copyright permission, you may be able to clone it (copy it) to OpenEd@JWU. This allows for you to retain, revise, remix, reuse, and redistribute it (5 Rs). OpenEd@JWU is the place where you can customize the resource for your purposes.

Note: please check with a librarian to confirm the copyright permissions on Pressbooks content. Not all resources published to the Pressbooks platform have a Creative Commons license which allows for the 5 Rs.

Pressbooks has created a guide on How to Use the Pressbooks Directory, or you can Take the Tour from the landing page (see below)

OER Textbooks and other Repositories

Despite its length, this is not an exhaustive list. Many other open textbooks and multimedia resources exist. Make an appointment with a librarian if you want help sorting through these materials.

2012 Book Project

Archive of basic college textbooks provided under a Creative Commons license by a textbook publisher

Affordable Learning Georgia

The result of collaboration between the University System of Georgia and California State University. The site lists popular course titles along with OER that has been created or adapted to teach those subjects.

Bookboon

Free eBooks and textbooks in the Sciences, Management, Accounting, Math, Languages, Law, etc

California Digital Open Source Library

Library of textbooks, courses, course materials and more made possible by a legislative decision in California.

COERLL

The Center for Open Educational Resources and Language Learning presents a federally funded collection with resources for language learning.

College Open Textbooks

A collection of peer-reviewed open textbooks. Formats and copyright licenses differ.

Flat World Knowledge

Provides customizable textbooks and teaching materials to students at a low cost 

Global Text Project

Free library covering a variety of topics typical in an undergraduate program.

Hathi Trust Digital Library

Digital preservation repository containing open access works on all subjects

InTech

Provides multidisciplinary open access books and journals in Science, Technology, and Medicine.

Lumen Pressbooks

A collection of materials in a variety of subject areas developed by Lumen Learning.

NOBA

A non-profit organization that provides free psychology textbooks.

Ohio Digital Bookshelf

"Pilot project of Ohio Textbook HQ that aims to provide quality textbook options for faculty and better learning outcomes, while also saving students money."

Open Book Publishers 

A UK project that publishes books under open licenses.

Open Culture

A list of free textbooks written by scholars.

OpenEd at BC Campus

A Canadian Government funded project, begun in 2012, that provides students with open textbooks and other open educational resources.

Open Education Consortium

The primary goal of the Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources (CCCOER) is to create awareness of OER and help colleges to identify, create and/or repurpose existing OER to improve teaching and learning and make education more accessible for all learners.

Open Learning Initiative

The Open Learning Initiative is a grant-funded group at Carnegie Mellon University.

OpenStax College

Free, open-source, peer-reviewed an high-quality textbooks for your college course.

Open SUNY Textbooks

The result of an open textbook project at the State University of New York Libraries.

Open Textbook Library

A catalog of open access textbooks to be reviewed by faculty members, made available by the University of Minnesota's College of Education and Human Development. Textbooks in this catalog are openly licensed, complete, and available in print at very little cost. 

PDX Scholar

Portland State University's institutional repository, which includes a small collection of open access texts authored by faculty there. Remixing may be required as some content was gathered from paid library materials.

Project Gutenberg

Library of open access ebooks, including creative works in the public domain.

Saylor Academy

Includes courses on Art History, Biology, Business Administration, Chemistry, Communication, Computer Science, Economics, English, History, Mathematics, Philosophy, Physics, Political Science, Professional Development, Psychology, Sociology, Study Skills

SmARThistory

Art history textbook including multimedia from Khan Academy.

Textbook Media

Textbooks sorted by author and topic that can be downloaded for free or, in some cases, purchased in print.