Library Guides: Open Education Resources: Find OERs

In This Section

In this section, you'll find:

Sources for finding OERs, including
- General OER repositories
- Open textbooks, both general resources and specific books by subject
Sources for ebooks
Sources for open lesson plans

Want a walk-through of the process?

Try this worksheet:

OER Treasure Hunt Worksheet (PDF, 77 KB)
This worksheet walks through the process of finding an OER for a course, from identifying search terms to reflecting on what you find. From Iowa State University's Abbey Elder (Open Access & Scholarly Communication Librarian).

OER Repositories

These search tools are broad and will return (text)books as well as ancillary materials, such as worksheets, assignments, study guides, homework tools, etc.

OER Commons
OER Commons is a public digital library of open educational resources for educators in higher education as well as K-12. Explore, create, and collaborate with educators around the world to improve curriculum.
Mason OER Metafinder
The Mason OER Metafinder helps you find Open Educational Resources. The OER Metafinder launches a real-time, simultaneous search across 21 different sources of open educational materials as you hit the Search button. From George Mason University.
OASIS
From SUNY Geneseo's Milne Library, 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 117 different sources and contains 388,707 records.

Textbooks

These resources focus specifically on open textbooks.

Open Textbook Library
The Open Textbook Library is a comprehensive referatory that points to open textbooks by a variety of authors and publishers. Hosted by the University of Minnesota Libraries.
LibreTexts
An open textbook initiative begun at the University of California - Davis. An easy-to-use online platform for the construction, customization, and dissemination of open educational resources.
BC Campus - Open Textbooks
Textbooks published by an organization in British Columbia working to advance the use of open educational resources and open pedagogy, among other initiatives.
OpenStax
OpenStax, an initiative of Rice University, publishes high-quality, peer-reviewed, openly licensed college textbooks that are absolutely free online and low cost in print.

Textbooks by Subject

Nursing

Open RN
Open Educational Resources for Nursing: The Open RN project is funded by a $2.5 million dollar grant from the Department of Education to create 5 OER Nursing Textbooks with 25 associated Virtual Reality scenarios. The first textbook (Nursing Pharmacology) was published Fall 2020. Watch this page for future developments and texbooks to be published over the next several years.

Public Speaking

The Public Speaking Project
A free online public speaking textbook and other resources for teaching public speaking.

Writing & Research Instruction

Write Here, Right Now: An Interactive Introduction to Academic Writing & Research
A thorough open textbook on writing and research geared towards first-year students. Includes a section of tips and information for instructors.
Choosing & Using Sources: A Guide to Academic Research
Written by faculty at Ohio State (so some activities are specific to OSU students), this open text covers all aspects of research from finding and evaluating sources to integrating sources into writing assignments and citing sources.
Introduction to College Research
Developed by librarians at several California community colleges - focuses on research only (not writing), and includes a section on algorithms, misinformation, and fact-checking.
Doing Research: A Student's Guide to Finding and Using the Best Sources
A modules-based approach to learning research skills that emphasizes the reflective nature of information discovery, the contextual basis for evaluating that information, and a recognition that information has value.

Music Theory

Open Music Theory
Open Music Theory is an open-source, interactive, online “text”book for college-level music theory courses.

History

THE AMERICAN YAWP: A Massively Collaborative Open U.S. History Textbook
A free and online, collaboratively built, open American history textbook designed for college-level history courses. All contributors are experienced college-level instructors.

eBooks

While not OERs in the sense that they can be remixed and adapted, these ebooks are can either be downloaded an unlimited number of times or are open access.

ACLS Humanities E-Books This link opens in a new window
ACLS Humanities E-Book (HEB) is a digital collection of over 5,400 seminal books in the humanities and related social sciences. These titles are presented in collaboration with more than 120 publishers and Michigan Publishing. Books in the HEB collection have been recommended and reviewed by scholars and constituent learned societies of the American Council of Learned Societies. This is a paid subscription resource provided by Raugust Library.

ACLS Chapter Download Instructions (PDF)

Springer Open Access eBooks
Open access ebooks from Springer's collection of scientific, technological and medical journals, books and reference works. Springer is a highly-respected publisher.

Lesson Plans

These resources provide freely available, open lesson plans.

New Literacies Alliance
Interactive, online lessons for information literacy topics, ranging from finding and evaluating sources to citing sources and understanding the nature of scholarly conversation. These can be used as a static webpage or integrated into MyUJ (which would take some set-up - contact Amanda if you're interested in this).