Finding Open Textbooks
It may feel daunting to start finding OER. The following provides guidance on how to search for OER textbooks.
Best Bets: Repositories
It is useful to browse through the most high-quality OER repositories first. It is helpful to note that many of these tools aggregate OER from other repositories — and therefore, you many find some of the same resources in each repository.
General Education Level Courses
The following are the best starting points for introductory-level course textbooks:
- Open Textbook Library – a large collection of openly licensed, peer-reviewed textbooks in all subject areas
- Pressbooks Directory-a listing of OER created with Pressbooks
- LibreTexts – open textbooks built by faculty, students, and outside experts
More Niche Courses
While these also include introductory material in some cases, the following are the best starting points for upper-level courses:
- Milne Open Textbooks– a catalog of open textbooks authored and peer-reviewed by SUNY faculty and staff.
- Directory of Open Access Books – aggregator of open access books in a wide range of subject areas. Be sure to check for a Creative Commons license.
- HathiTrust Digital Library (use IU login as member institution) – digital access to thousands of titles held in academic libraries. Many of these works are in the public domain, so they may not have a CC license but are still free to use in your course materials.
Broad Search
If you want to be more exhaustive, consider using OASIS from SUNY or MOM from George Mason University. OASIS is a search tool that aims to make the discovery of open content easier by searching multiple sources for OER and other open content at once. It’s a search engine for OER! Whenever possible, try to utilize disciplinary language (i.e., “oncology” in addition to “cancer”). Beware that this method can be overwhelming as it searches a lot of sources at once. MOM, short for Mason OER Metafinder, launches a real-time, simultaneous search across 22 different sources of open educational materials as you hit the Search button. MOM searches well-known OER repositories like OpenStax, OER Commons, MERLOT but also open access sites like HathiTrust, DPLA, Internet Archive and NYPL Digital Collections where valuable but often overlooked (and often “open”) educational materials may be found.
- OASIS (Openly Available Sources Integrated Search) – searches open content from 114 different sources
- The Mason OER Metafinder (MOM)– searches 22 different sources in real time and can include open access, often archival, repositories’.
References/ Additional Resources
- How to Find and Evaluate OER by Abbey Elder
- “Finding OER” by Amanda Larson, slides on YouTube and CC image searches are especially useful
- Open Access and OER at IU East by Beth South