Find OER
The resources outlined on this page have been selected to assist faculty members in locating high-quality OER textbooks for use in their classroom.
All highlighted resources offer free, peer-reviewed texts available for download.
If you have any questions related to these OER resources, please don't hesitate to contact a librarian.
OER Discovery Resources
These collections cover a wide range of introductory textbooks, including: Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Anatomy & Physiology, Pre-Algebra, Algebra, Statistics, Economics (including Macro & Micro), Sociology, Psychology, and US History
- OpenStax College offers free, peer-reviewed textbooks for a common set of course offerings. In addition to free downloads, low-cost print versions are available through their website.
- All OpenStax textbooks are available under a creative commons attribution license, allowing for the editing and mixing of textbook content to suit specific class needs.
- An initiative of the University of Minnesota's College of Education and Human Development, the Open Textbook Library is a searchable catalog of OER textbooks. Available for download, all texts have been reviewed by contributing faculty to ensure quality.
- All cataloged Open Textbooks are available under various creative commons licenses.
- Developed through funding by British Columbia's Ministry of Advanced Education, BCCampus OpenEd is an open textbook initiative designed for use by first and second year undergraduate courses. Currently, the organization has published over 40 OER textbooks.
- Freely downloadable, all open textbooks are available under creative commons licenses.
- An open-access initiative launched by the State University of New York Libraries, Open SUNY publishes a variety of peer-reviewed textbooks. These texts are mainly focused on subjects in the humanities.
- All Open SUNY textbooks are made available under creative commons non-commercial licenses.
In addition to general textbook resources, the OER community has also developed a number of subject specific resource collections. This includes resources related to Science, Math, Medicine, Computer Science, Humanities, and Art & Art History.
Health & Medicine Textbook Collections
- A free, peer-reviewed publication outlet organized by the Association of American Medical Colleges. Users have access to various educational tools, including: virtual patients, simulation cases, videos, and assessment tools.
- MedEd Portal content is distributed under various creative commons licenses
Math & Science Textbook Collections
- The American Institute of Mathematics has organized a list of open educational textbooks for use in higher education. All downloadable textbooks have been jvetted by the organization's board of educators.
- All textbooks are freely available under a variety of licensing statements.
- A project started at Carnegie Mellon, ChemCollective is an OER resource containing a variety of Chemistry related resources for teaching at the undergraduate level. Resources include Chemistry-focused virtual labs, simulations, and concept tests.
- All ChemCollective content is freely available under a creative commons attribution license.
- A collection of open textbooks written by Computer Scientist Allen B. Downey. These high-quality texts, many of which are sold under the O'Reilly name, are freely downloadable in PDF format.
- All Green Tea Press textbooks are available under a GNU Free Documentation License.
Social Science Textbook Collections
- Used by a large number of colleges and universities around the country, NOBA offers free, peer-reviewed Psychology textbooks for use in undergraduate instruction. Print versions are available for less than $15 dollars.
- NOBA textbooks are made available under a creative commons, non-commerical license. This give NOBA users the ability to modify or combine texts to suit their class needs.
- An initiative of the University of Houston, Digital History is an interactive webpage meant to support the teaching of US History at the undergraduate level. The site is fully searchable by topic and era, with a focus on linking to primary sources.
- Digital History content is made available under the projects own non-commercial copyright license.
- Academic Earth is a collection of free video lectures and online courses from some of the world's top universities including Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale.
- There are over 1,500 videos available and searchable through Academic Earth.
- MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) is a free and open collection of course materials including lectures, lecture notes, reading lists, activities, and syllabi from thousands of courses across the MIT curriculum.
- Content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).
- The Open Course Library (OCL) is a collection of openly licensed (CC BY, unless otherwise noted) course materials maintained by the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges to help faculty find course materials that cost $30 or less for 81 of their highest enrolled courses.
- Course materials include syllabi, course activities, readings, and assessments and were designed by college faculty, instructional designers, librarians, and other experts.
- Saylor Academy is a non-profit organization providing approximately 100 free full-length courses at the college and professional levels.
- Most materials found on Saylor have Creative Commons licenses and can be reused in some fashion, although the specific license for each course is determined by the original creator.
Contact Us for Help
For help locating more OER resources, contact a librarian.