LibGuides: Open Education Resources: Textbooks

Textbooks

Books and collections of books written specifically as textbooks. According to the College Board Annual Survey of Colleges, the average estimated cost of books and supplies at a 2 year institution in 2015-16 will be $1364. This cost can be lowered dramatically by the selection of high quality Open Source textbooks. Many Universities are piloting programs to produce these textbooks and more will be appearing in the next few years. An open textbook is an integrated course-associated learning tool that is in the public domain or has been open-licensed by the copyright holder to permit re-use without the necessity of asking permission of the copyright holder. Some material is modifiable by the user for order and topic coverage. Some business models allow free or low cost online textbooks with a charge for printed or extended materials.

BCcampus Open Textbooks
A curated collection of open textbooks that align with the top 40 highest enrolled 1st and 2nd year post-secondary subject areas in British Columbia.
Bookshelf « Saylor.org
Textbooks associated with Saylor.org courses. Under various open licenses.
Expanding Your Skills by Dorothea Salo
A continuing education guide for information and library professionals (and students) wishing to expand their skills. It's also a work in progress accepting community input. While it's aimed at the information and library science field, the techniques discussed will work for nearly any subject.
Flat World Knowledge Textbooks
Add, delete and rearrange content to match your syllabus. Textbooks are low cost ($24) to read online, with slightly more expensive downloadable and print-on-demand copies. Registration required and must be validated as an instructor at your institution to complete instructor registration.
Free (but not Open) Copyrighted Textbooks « Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources
An additional list of open access (but not open copyright) textbooks.CCCOER has not vetted the open textbooks and videos on this list for quality or accuracy of the content.
Global Text Project
Open textbooks in open (and therefore easily converted) formats
HippoCampus
High school and early college level multimedia textbooks, indexed by topic as well as by book. Instructors can adopt textbooks for specific classes.
MERLOT Open Textbooks
Textbooks specifically designated for free use. MERLOT also has tutorials, lesson plans, and other educational resources. Registration required to access full site.
National Academies Press
Thousands of books and reports by the various National Academies in Washington DC. Look for the Read it Online link to the left of the book descriptions.
O'Reilly Open Books Project
Computer and technology related books from the publisher of the "animals" computer programming books. Not all the books on the site are free.
Open College Textbooks
Free and open textbooks plus low cost choices suitable for community college (and lower level undergraduate) courses
OpenStax
Textbooks from Rice University, available during Spring 2012
Open Textbook Catalog (University of Minnesota)
In an effort to reduce costs for students, the UM College of Education and Human Development has created this catalog of open textbooks to be reviewed by faculty members. They can be downloaded at no charge or printed at the cost of printing. Read full press release
Orange Grove
Open textbooks assembled by University Press of Florida and the Orange Grove Digital Repository. Textbooks on all subjects, free to read and download, and available at low cost for print on demand ordering of hardcopy versions.
Smarthistory: a multimedia web-book about art and art history
Multimedia art history textbook
Theory and Practice of Online Learning
an online textbook on online learning from one of the premier online universities, Athabasca University in Canada.
WikiBooks
completely open and free textbooks on a wide variety of subjects. There are no qualifications for creating/editing, so quality varies considerably, and many books are incomplete. This link is to the English collection, scroll to the bottom of the page for links to collections in other languages, and further Wikimedia projects.
Writing Spaces - Readings on Writing
Creative Commons licensed, peer-reviewed essay collections written by writing teachers for students.

Open Education Resources: Textbooks

An Open Textbook Testamonial

Textbooks