LibGuides: Copyright: Collections &amp; Open Textbooks

OER COLLECTIONS & OPEN TEXTBOOKS

Browse OER Collections and Open Textbooks:

BC Open Textbook Project - managed by College & University in Vancouver, British Columbia (BCcampus): "Search for quality open textbooks offered in a variety of digital formats; the first step in adopting open educational resources. Search by subject and download them to your computer."

Cool4Ed - California Open Online Library for Education: "The three State of California Higher Education Systems are working together to provide you easy access to quality FREE and OPEN eTextbooks that everyone and anyone can use for teaching and learning"

Digital Commons Network
The Digital Commons Network brings together free, full-text scholarly articles from hundreds of universities and colleges worldwide.

Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB)
"The primary aim of DOAB is to increase discoverability of Open Access books." Contains over 27005 Academic peer-reviewed books from 371 publishers.

Global Text Project - Free Tech Books - a joint project of the Terry College of Business of the University of Georgia and The Daniels College of Business of the University of Denver. Publishes electronic texts for students in the developing world.

HippoCampus - a free, core academic web site that delivers rich multimedia content--videos, animations, and simulations--on general education subjects to middle-school and high-school teachers and college professors, and their students.

Library of Congress - "This is a growing online collection of contemporary open access e-books. All of these books have been made available for download on the Library's website in keeping with the intent of their creators and publishers, which chose to publish these works under open access licenses to allow the broadest possible access and reuse."

Mason OER Metafinder - Multi-search platform from over 20 different sources of open educational materials.

MedEdPORTAL - The Journal of Teaching and Learning Resources - Peer-reviewed modules and publications are freely available

MERLOT - provides access to curated online learning and support materials and content creation tools, led by an international community of educators, learners and researchers.

MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) - a web-based publication of virtually all MIT course content. OCW is open and available to the world and is a permanent MIT activity.

M.O.S.T. Commons - "A collaborative, online space designed to support faculty and staff in adopting, creating, and sharing open educational resources (OER)."

NanoHUB - a resource for nanoscience and nanotechnology, supported by the National Science Foundation and other funding agencies.

OAPEN - "The OAPEN Library contains freely accessible academic books, mainly in the area of humanities and social sciences. OAPEN works with publishers to build a quality controlled collection of open access books, and provides services for publishers, libraries and research funders in the areas of deposit, quality assurance, dissemination, and digital preservation.

OASIS (Openly Available Sources Integrated Search) - open-content search discovery tool from 95 different sources and over 367,883 records.

OER Commons - "OER Commons is a public digital library of open educational resources. Explore, create, and collaborate with educators around the world to improve curriculum." ISKME (Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education)

OKR - Open Knowledge Repository - World Bank

Open Education Consortium - "a worldwide community of hundreds of higher education institutions and associated organizations committed to advancing open education and its impact on global education"

Open Research Library - "The Open Research Library (ORL) is planned to include all Open Access book content worldwide on one platform for user-friendly discovery, offering a seamless experience navigating more than 20,000 Open Access books. This vital infrastructure is slated to comprise the most comprehensive collection of peer-reviewed Open Access books accessible for everyone."

Open Textbook Library - "The Open Textbook Library provides a growing catalog of free, peer-reviewed, and openly-licensed textbooks." University of Minnesota

OpenStax - founded at Rice University, OpenStax CNX (formerly Connexion) provides free access to thousands of learning objects in various disciplines.

NIAL OER Collections Repository - This repository, sponsored by the Network of Idaho Academic Libraries, collects OER materials from higher education institutions throughout the state of Idaho. Educators should upload sources or give them to the OER Librarian to upload. Then, they can use materials supplied by other institutions. Any educator, administrator, or librarian in an academic institution of Idaho can become a member of this repository, and everyone in the world can benefit from its collections.

Pressbooks Directory - "This directory provides an index of 1652 books published across 80 Pressbooks networks. Search and filter books by keyword, subject matter, license, and more."

Teaching Commons - OER resources from leading colleges and universities. Includes Boise State open textbooks added to ScholarWorks.

Wikibooks - "Simply, Wikibooks is a collection of open-content textbooks. Wikibooks is for textbooks, annotated texts, instructional guides, and manuals. These materials can be used in a traditional classroom, an accredited or respected institution, a home-school environment, as part of a Wikiversity course, or for self-learning. As a general rule, only instructional books are suitable for inclusion."

META SEARCH TOOLS

"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 95 different sources and contains 367,883 records." ~ https://oasis.geneseo.edu/

Federated search for traditional OER repositories like OpenStax, OER Commons, MERLOT but also sites like HathiTrust, DPLA, Internet Archive, and NYPL Digital Collections. ~ https://oer.deepwebaccess.com/oer/desktop/en/search.html

More Sources of Free Online Materials

American Memory (Library of Congress)
Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources Founded in 2007, the Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources (CCCOER) aims "to promote the awareness and adoption of open education to enhance teaching and learning at community and technical colleges." Here, readers can learn about the benefits of open educational resources (OER) for both students and educators, and interested instructors will find tips on sourcing, adopting, and creating OER under the Learn tab. Faculty and administrators considering adopting OER on a larger scale should check out the Plan tab, where they will find planning guides for institutions and faculty, as well as a guide to integrating students' perspectives into the planning process. For institutions that may be considering going even further with OER, the website also features a section addressing OER-based degrees, including case studies from 16 community and technical colleges. Finally, under the Get Involved tab, readers will find CCCOER's community email group (which has searchable archives) as well as their upcoming and archived webinars. A member of the global Open Education Consortium (featured in the 3-01-2019 Scout Report), as of this write-up CCCOER boasts 83 member colleges in 34 U.S. states and is directed by Una Daly. [JDC]
Digital Public Library of America DPLA connects people to the riches held within America’s libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural heritage institutions. All of the materials found through DPLA—photographs, books, maps, news footage, oral histories, personal letters, museum objects, artwork, government documents, and so much more—are free and immediately available in digital format. The cultural institutions participating in DPLA represent the richness and diversity of America itself, from the smallest local history museum to our nation’s largest cultural institutions.
eCampusOntario: Open Library Launched in 2017, the eCampusOntario Open Library curates more than 500 open-access educational resources for post-secondary educators and learners. A range of subjects are represented in the library, including: "computing and IT," "language and linguistics," "mathematics and science," and "philosophy and religion." In addition to browsing the resource collection, readers will find several other unique OER tools on the site. For example, though the cost-saving benefits of open educational resources have been widely recognized, Open Library makes these benefits tangible through its impact calculator. Found on the Impact page, this tool allows educators to input some basic data (such as the cost of the resource they are replacing and the number of students they are teaching that term) to quickly calculate the total savings. Notably, the "average savings per educator," is more than $50,000, and the "average savings per learner," is more than $100. Educators new to OER may also want to explore the Get Support page, which hosts several helpful materials. Educators willing to share materials they created can do so via the "Make a Suggestion" box on the About page. The library is made possible by a collaboration between eCampusOntario and Ryerson University. Readers can also view the site in French.
Internet Archive
Library of Congress: Free to Use and Reuse Sets The Library of Congress is well known and loved for its vast online collections. Readers who find the library's digital enormity overwhelming, as well as those seeking royalty-free images, may appreciate these sets of copyright-free images and other content curated from the library's holdings. Here, visitors will find more than two dozen sets organized by theme, many of which are historical images and ephemera. The themes cover a diverse range of subjects, ranging from cats and dogs to Abraham Lincoln to roadside America, with several themes highlighting various types of historical posters. While most of the collections consist of photographs, documents, and other images, visitors will also find a collection of public domain films from the National Film Registry, as well as a vintage set of classic children's books that can be read online, including The Secret Garden and The Jungle Book. Because the "Library believes that this content is either in the public domain, has no known copyright, or has been cleared by the copyright owner for public use," the items featured in these sets have been deemed "free to use and reuse."
Libretexts Learners and educators in search of free textbooks may find a solution in LibreTexts, a nonprofit project that describes itself as "a multi-institutional collaborative venture to develop the next generation of open-access texts to improve postsecondary education at all levels of higher learning." Visitors to LibreTexts will find "twelve independently operating and interconnected libraries that focus on augmenting post-secondary education in specific fields in STEM fields, social sciences, and humanities." Within these libraries, readers can find bookshelves of digital textbooks, campus courses of customized LibreTexts, homework exercises, and ancillary materials such as visualizations and simulations. As of this write-up, LibreTexts contains nearly 400 open-access textbooks and other course materials that are developed collaboratively between faculty, students, and outside experts and scholars. LibreTexts is directed by its founder Delmar Larsen, Associate Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Davis, who was inspired by his own frustration with errors in the conventional textbooks that his students had been paying for. In October 2018, LibreTexts was awarded the US Department of Education's inaugural Open Textbook Pilot Grant, worth a total of $4.9 million, which the project is using to expand their educational content and incorporate additional advanced features such as interactive 3D animations and integration with online learning management systems.
Milne Open Textbooks Instructors and learners who are on the lookout for free educational materials may want to check out Open SUNY Textbooks. First launched in 2012, this resource is an open-access textbook publishing initiative of the State University of New York Libraries that is managed by Milne Library Publishing at SUNY Geneseo. At the link above, readers will find (as of this write-up) approximately 40 college-level textbooks and other open education resources (OER), roughly half of which are original textbooks published by this initiative and all of which are openly licensed and available to download for free. These resources cover a broad range of disciplines, from STEM subjects like mathematics and microbiology to humanities subjects like film production and poetry. There are also resources to support general learners, such as guides on information literacy and academic writing. While visitors can browse the collection by author, subject, or SUNY affiliation, it may be more helpful to conduct a keyword search or to view all the resources on one page by clicking Browse Textbooks. In 2017, Open SUNY Textbooks was selected to partner with OpenStax (see the 3-22-2019 Scout Report), another major OER initiative.
NYPL: Public Domain Collections According to Copyright.gov, "A work of authorship is in the 'public domain' if it is no longer under copyright protection or if it failed to meet the requirements for copyright protection." Works in the public domain may be used free of charge for any purpose. Amazingly, the New York Public Library has recently placed more than 180,000 of the items in their Digital Collections in the public domain. Readers may like to explore several tools and projects designed to inspire use of the public domain resources. These include Visualize the Public Domain, where readers may scout the public domain resources by century, genre, collection, or color; Discover the Collections, where experts post blog entries inviting users to use the collections in interesting ways; and a series of Public Domain Remixes, in which NYPL staff have used public domain materials to create groundbreaking games and projects. In addition, readers may use the excellent search function to explore the digital collections and discover for themselves what might be useful.
Open Book Publishers At first glance, Open Book Publishers may look like an ordinary bookselling site. What makes the literary hub unique is that it not only publishes books in traditional print and ebook formats, but it also publishes "free online editions of every title in PDF, HTML and XML formats that can be read via our website, downloaded, reused or embedded anywhere." This online format also allows for more interactive texts, as authors can embed images, audio, and more. Readers can browse the latest titles on the home page or sort by categories, including Digital Humanities and Sciences, using the left-hand panel. Educators may want to pay special attention to the selection of Textbooks and Learning Guides. The site also provides information about the submission process and hosts a blog packed with book reviews and other insights. In addition to sales and donations, Open Book Publishers receives financial support from the Polonsky Foundation, the Thriplow Charitable Trust, the Jessica E. Smith and Kevin R. Brine Charitable Trust, and The Progress Foundation.
Open Casebooks Legal scholars and students can happily avoid expensive textbook costs with H20 Open Casebooks. Designed by Harvard Law School's Library Innovation Lab, H20 Open Casebooks enables law professors to create and share textbooks via a Creative Commons license. Professors have access to all of the case law cataloged by Harvard's CaseLaw Access Project (readers may remember this project from the 04-19-2019 Scout Report). This provides plenty of content to create casebooks on standard and niche areas of the law, without burdensome costs. Instructors new to the site may want to explore the Help Guide (linked on the home page), which offers written and video instructions. While a free account (and an academic institution email address) are required to create a textbook, anyone can access the existing casebooks. The "Search" button at the top of the home page invites users to browse the more than 250 casebooks available as of this write-up, which cover everything from "Advanced Intellectual Property/Cyberlaw" to "Animals and the Law in Canada."
Open Course Library From the Washington State Board of Community and Technical Colleges comes the Open Course Library, an extensive collection of courses and course materials (such as syllabi, classroom handouts, readings, multimedia resources, and assignments) for use by college-level students and instructors. As the authors of this website emphasize, these materials are not intended to replace classroom instruction; rather, these materials are made available in order to provide affordable classroom materials for students and resources for faculty members to consider integrating into existing courses. A central stated goal of the Open Course Library is to reduce costs to students. All courses included here can be taught without a textbook or utilize textbooks that cost $30 or less. As of this write-up, the Open Course Library features over 80 courses, including courses in English composition, symbolic logic, mathematics, and foreign languages. All course materials can be easily accessed as Google Docs.
Open Editions Literature lovers may enjoy Open Editions, a site providing "open-source electronic scholarly editions of public domain literature." Guided by the "principles of the Free and Open Source Software movement," the platform is dedicated to accessibility and accuracy. Not only does Open Editions make texts freely available to readers, but the site also "aim[s] to aggregate the literary knowledge that surrounds a text, codify that knowledge, and integrate it into the text." The work of Open Editions is a community effort and, as the site notes, "anyone can contribute ... and help improve the texts in it. No prior experience with programming is necessary." Those looking to participate should explore the Contribute page, which provides instructions for both beginners and advanced users. On the Texts page, readers can explore several classics from Irish novelist James Joyce such as A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses. All of the site's content is accessible through a Creative Commons license.
OpenIntro Instructors and learners of statistics may be interested in the independent nonprofit OpenIntro, whose mission is to make educational products that are free, transparent, and lower barriers to education. Here, readers will find three introductory statistics textbooks that are well-suited for courses at the high school or college level. Two of them, OpenIntro Statistics and Advanced High School Statistics, were updated with new editions in 2019, while the third textbook, Introductory Statistics with Randomization and Simulation, was published in 2014. All three can be downloaded for free as PDF files, and each textbook also has a variety of supplementary content available, such as data sets, R packages, LaTeX files, online apps, and more. OpenIntro also offers practice labs for several statistical programs: R (and RStudio), SAS, and Stata, as well as numerous videos aligned to different sections of each textbook. Additionally, instructors can register with OpenIntro for free to gain access to extra resources like solutions to even-numbered exercises and sample exams. For anyone interested in learning statistical skills, OpenIntro is a valuable resource.
SkillsCommons Educators and learners in a variety of industries, particularly those at the community college level, may be interested in SkillsCommons, a repository of Open Education Resources (OER) aimed primarily at workforce development. This digital library initially launched in 2014 and contains a wide variety of learning materials produced by the over 700 community colleges that have been grantees of the U.S. Department of Labor's Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT) program. Here, visitors can find OER syllabi, online and hybrid courses and modules, assessment tools, assignments, and other teaching materials, all of which are free to reuse, adapt, and redistribute. This vast array can be browsed by material type, industry, occupation, institution, and more, with most of the contents intended for learners at the associate degree or certificate level. First-time visitors may want to check out the showcases section for an introduction to SkillsCommons' contents, and an extensive support section with explanations, tutorials, and FAQs for using the repository is also available. The SkillsCommons website is currently designed and managed by MERLOT (featured in the 3-01-2019 Scout Report) and California State University on behalf of the TAACCCT program.
Wisc-Online Founded in 1999, Wisc-Online is a non-profit organization that offers a "repository of high-quality educational learning materials FREE to learners and educators." These materials are created by educators in the Wisconsin Technical College System (WTCS) in partnership with instructional design experts at Fox Valley Technical College. One highlight of this collection is a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) designed to teach computer skills. This course, which covers basic skills such as using a mouse, navigating an operating system, and using a word processor, may especially appeal to adult educators and adult services librarians. On the Basic Computer Skills MOOC page, visitors can play interactive computer games by navigating to the play games tab. Games are organized by category, including career clusters, manufacturing and engineering, math, and social studies. In addition, Wisc-Online also offers a number of game templates for educators interested in creating their own games.
Young Minds Inspired Educators of a variety of disciplines and levels may want to check out Young Minds Inspired (YMI). Describing itself as "the nation's leading provider of free educational outreach programs for learners of all ages," YMI offers a wide range of lesson plans and classroom activities. Most YMI resources are created with elementary, middle, or high school students in mind, but it also provides material appropriate for preschool or college students. Visitors can browse lesson plans by broad categories such as language arts, STEM skills, or outside the classroom, and each resource thumbnail is labeled to indicate its intended audience. Many YMI resources, which are "produced in partnership with corporations, associations, and other organizations," are designed to accompany popular culture films, Broadway musicals, and novels, while others serve as educational PSAs on topics like energy conservation and the importance of vaccinations. YMI programs are developed by curriculum experts and reviewed by active teachers to ensure academic quality and educational value. Launched in 1978, YMI is led by Dr. Dominic Kinsley as its Editor in Chief and by Donald J. Lay as its Director of Outreach.

Helpful Websites

Connect OER As an information sharing platform that connects educators across North America, Connect OER lives up to its name. Readers may want to start by navigating to the Directory tab to view the existing database. Several filters are provided for more fruitful browsing; for example, selections allow users to search by name, location, activity, and other institutional characteristics, and buttons at the top of the page invite users to narrow by Institutions, Programs, Policies, Events, and Resources. Then, interested readers can create a free profile for their institution to highlight their own OER contributions and share best practices in the field. Users should note that most of the information they contribute to the database will be available in the public domain through a CC0 Public Domain Dedication. The FAQ button at the bottom of the page provides guidance on how to request an account, how to maintain and make changes to user profiles, and other troubleshooting advice. Additionally, the Reports tab contains comprehensive yearly snapshots of Connect OER's efforts and the evolution of OER generally. Connect OER is a project of SPARC, a global group dedicated to "making open the default for research and education."
Finding Public Domain & Creative Commons Media This handy reference was crafted by Research Librarian Meg Kribble and will help interested readers locate and correctly attribute public domain and Creative Commons media for personal and academic use. To start, the guide breaks down the difference between the public domain and Creative Commons. Then, the guide links to a helpful three-minute video that explains the Creative Commons process and offers an infographic detailing the various types of Creative Commons licenses. Perhaps most helpful, are the annotated listings of public domain and Creative Commons Web resources. This thorough compilation is sure to make it easy to find Images, Audio Content, and Video Content for a variety of projects and presentations.
Foster Open Science Toolkit FOSTER Plus, a two-year EU-funded project focused on supporting and contributing to a cultural shift towards open science in the European research community, has developed a collection of ten free online courses to "answer some of the most common questions you might have about putting open science into practice." Each course centers on a different aspect of open science, which FOSTER notes "applies to all research disciplines" and defines it as "the movement to make scientific research, data, and dissemination accessible to all levels of an inquiring society." Topics include managing and sharing research data, open-source software and workflows, and data protection and ethics. The courses can be taken in any order, but all learners should begin with What Is Open Science? as an introduction. Each course takes about one to two hours to complete, and learners can also earn badges for successful completion with free registration, though an account is not necessary to access the courses. This toolkit is primarily intended for early-career researchers, academic staff (such as librarians and IT technicians), and policymakers. The FOSTER Plus project will be continuing until the end of 2019 and is conducted by eleven project partners in six European countries.
ICFL Digital Inclusion
OER Toolkit Educators looking for guidance as they expand the role of open educational resources (OERs) in their classrooms can turn to this resource. The comprehensive guide is conveniently divided into several sections and caters to a range of audiences. Those new to OERs will find valuable information on the About page, including a breakdown of the 5 "R's" of OER: retain, reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute. For a reliable list of OER hubs, check out the Quick List page. Educators seeking advice on how to create their own OERs will find step-by-step instructions by browsing the Creating, Licensing, and Collaborating pages. The Advocacy and Sustainability pages provide tips that will be especially useful to librarians, educators, administrators, and other stakeholders hoping to implement OER policies at the macro-level. The guide is available under a Creative Commons License and was originally created by The Learning Portal. The toolkit was developed by Colleges Libraries Ontario (CLO), the Ontario Colleges Library Service (OCLS), and the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME).