LibGuides: Open Educational & Open Access Resources: OER Textbooks

Textbooks

Books and collections of books written specifically as textbooks. 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.
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.
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 right 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.
OpenStax
Textbooks from Rice University, available during Spring 2012
Open Textbook Library (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.
Smarthistory: a multimedia web-book about art and art history
Multimedia art history textbook
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.

Searching for OER

Do a general OER search using Google Advanced Search and filter your results by “Usage Rights” (pull-down menu at the bottom of the screen). Filter by usage rights rights "Free to use, share or modify" and/or "Free to use, share or modify, even commercially."

Use the Creative Commons CC Search and limit by content you can Modify or adapt.