LibGuides: Open Educational & Open Access Resources: Finding OER Textbooks

OER Textbook Collections

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.

ASCCC Curated List of OER by Discipline
In order to facilitate faculty consideration of OER and the development of OER/ZTC degree pathways, the ASCCC OERI has worked with the ASCCC OERI Discipline Leads to provide a curated lists of resources.
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.
HippoCampus
High school and early college level multimedia textbooks, indexed by topic as well as by book. Instructors can adopt textbooks for specific classes.
LibreTexts
An online platform for all aspects of OER including the publishing, printing, developing, “remixing”, interactive exercises, homework systems, and more.
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.
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
As an educational initiative at Rice University that provides peer-reviewed, openly licensed college textbooks that are absolutely free online and low cost in print.
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
Textbooks on art history.
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.

Find OER Textbooks via OneSearch

You can find OER textbooks from OpenStax, Open Textbook Library, and Open SUNY via OneSearch, the library's online catalog. Follow these steps:

Go to the Library home page and use the Search Everything tab to enter your keywords and then click Search:

Next, in the "Refine by" menu on the left-hand side, under Availability, select Open Access and under Resource Type select Books, and then click on Apply Filters:

Browse through the results to find OER textbooks online!

OER Resource Collections in Canvas Commons

A search of "CVC" in the Canvas Commons will show you the CVC-OEIs OpenStax resources. Additionally, a search for "ASCCC" will show you resources that the ASCCC OERI Initiative is adding to the Commons. You can import a Commons resource directly into a Canvas course shell - where its contents will be added to whatever is already in the course. The only elements that the new content will override will be the image in the Canvas dashboard and the licensing indicated on the Frontpage.

Guide to Accessing Canvas Commons (a PDF)

Searching for OER via Google

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."