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Open Eduational Resources (OER)

This guide provides information about finding and using Open Educational Resources, or OER.

Find OER

There are MANY places online where you can find OER. Below are some good repositories and search tools to get started. If you need additional help finding OER for your course, contact your liaison librarian.

Search Across Multiple Sources of OER and Open Access Materials

The following resources primarily contain high quality open textbooks (mostly peer-reviewed) across various subject areas.

  • Open Textbook Library
    The Open Textbook Library provides a growing catalog of free, peer-reviewed, and openly-licensed textbooks.
  • Open Stax
    OpenStax is part of Rice University and publishes high-quality, peer-reviewed, openly licensed college textbooks that are free online and low cost in print.
  • BC Campus OpenEd
    The B.C. Open Textbook Collection is home to a growing selection of open textbooks for a variety of subjects and specialties. Discover open textbooks that have been reviewed by faculty, meet accessibility requirements, and/or include ancillary materials (quizzes, test banks, slides, videos, etc.).
  • LibreTexts
    LibreTexts offers materials in 12 widely used college-level disciplines in the sciences, humanities, and social sciences. It has 398 textbooks in its free online library and covers 154 courses.
  • Milne Open Textbooks
    Milne Open Textbooks (formerly Open SUNY Textbooks) is a catalog of open textbooks authored and peer-reviewed by State University of New York faculty and staff.
  • eCampus Ontario Open Library
    The eCampusOntario Open Library provides educators and learners with access to more than 250 free and openly-licensed educational resources. The curated collection aligns with top subject areas in post-secondary education and features reviews from experts and educators across Canada.
  • Pressbooks Directory
    A searchable library of free textbooks and other open educational resources (OER) published using the Pressbooks Authoring & Editing Platform.

The following resources contain other types of OER, such as syllabi, course handouts, lesson plans, etc. Some may also contain textbooks and other course materials.

  • OER Commons
    OER Commons currently includes open educational materials in broad subject areas. Materials include lesson plans, textbooks, activities, assessments, readings, and more.
  • MERLOT
    The MERLOT system provides access to curated online learning and support materials and content creation tools.
  • 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.
  • Teaching Commons
    The Teaching Commons brings together high-quality open educational resources from leading colleges and universities. Curated by librarians and their institutions, the Teaching Commons includes open access textbooks, course materials, lesson plans, multimedia, and more.
  • 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.
  • Open Course Library
    The Open Course Library is a collection of shareable course materials, including syllabi, course activities, readings, and assessments designed by teams of college faculty, instructional designers, librarians, and other experts.

The following resources contain e-books that are free to access, but that don't necessarily allow modification and re-use unless there is a license stating otherwise.

  • Directory of Open Access Books
    The Directory of Open Access Books provides a searchable index of 28,500+ academic, peer-reviewed open access books from 380+ publishers, with links to the full texts of the publications at the publisher's website or repository.
  • HathiTrust Digital Library
    HathiTrust Digital Library provides long-term preservation and access services to digitized content from a variety of sources, including Google, the Internet Archive, Microsoft, and in-house member institution initiatives. Items in the public domain are in full-view for everyone and items held in copyright are searchable.
  • Project Gutenberg
    Project Gutenberg is a library of over 60,000 free eBooks. Most of the eBooks are older literary works for which U.S. copyright has expired.
  • National Academies Press
    The National Academies Press (NAP) publishes the reports of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. The NAP publishes more than 200 books a year on a wide range of topics in science, engineering, and medicine, providing authoritative, independently-researched information on important matters in science and health policy.
  • Open Book Publishers
    Based in the UK, Open Book Publishers publishes open access books and textbooks in all areas.
  • Open Research Library
    The Open Research Library is an aggregation of peer-reviewed, open access, scholarly monographs. The collection aims to be comprehensive and provide readers and libraries a one-stop shop for OA book content.
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