Open Educational Resources: OER Collections

Big Ten Open Books is a collaboration between the university presses and libraries of the Big Ten Academic Alliance. The first collection is on the subject of Gender and Sexuality studies. Participating presses are Indiana University Press, Michigan State University Press, Northwestern University Press, Purdue University Press, University of Michigan Press, and University of Wisconsin Press.

This collection includes texts written specifically for the BC OpenTextbook initiative (the plan to have 40 books by September of 2014) as well as books from other sources. You can find out more about the BC textbook project.

This site is a clearinghouse of links to books hosted in various locations, and includes a large selection of international textbooks.

• Flatworld provides faculty customizable books for a relatively low cost to students. Access to the content is primarily through their website. Flatworld is strongest in business.
• Many of Flatworld's original books are available under a more open Creative Commons license by-nc-sa 3.0, (the newer books from their site require student purchase and use of the Flatworld site).

GALILEO Open Learning Materials brings together open educational resources throughout the University System of Georgia, including open textbooks and ancillary materials. This repository is administrated by Affordable Learning Georgia, an initiative of GALILEO and the University System of Georgia which aims to reduce the cost of textbooks to students and contribute to their retention, progression, and graduation. For more about Affordable Learning Georgia, visit Affordable Learning Georgia's website.

The LibreTexts mission is to unite students, faculty and scholars in a cooperative effort to develop an easy-to-use online platform for the construction, customization, and dissemination of open educational resources (OER) to reduce the burdens of unreasonable textbook costs to our students and society. Libretexts is a product UC Davis with collections in business, science and humanities

Lumen provides open courses in a variety of high-demand subjects and disciplines. These courses are collections of high-quality OER, not necessarily as a traditional textbook. You can use them as-is or modify them to fit your instructional style and students’ needs.

MERLOT (merlot.org) is a free and open peer reviewed collection of online teaching and learning materials and faculty-developed services contributed and used by an international education community. MERLOT was opened in 1997 and is supported by the California State University System.
MERLOT does not house content, but is a collection of links to other content. The materials can be ranked and many are peer-reviewed. There are discipline specific Communities that curate and review the content.
You can create and share personal collections of content links.

With the initiative of the SUNY Libraries, Open SUNY Textbooks publishes high-quality, peer-reviewed textbooks for use in higher education.

Unlike some of the open textbook initiatives these books are publicly available but not openly licensed. You can link to the content, and even link directly to specific pages. However, you cannot remix and redistribute the content.

OER Commons (oercommons.org) Curating best in class learning materials from around the world since 2007. The OER Commons is a single search source that pulls from multiple OER collections, including MERLOT and Connexions. It is a great first step in an OER search, but often more results can be found by searching the specific collection.
Users can create collections of existing content and create their own content pages to share.
The OER Commons is a supported by ISKME (the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education).

OERTX Repository is a public digital library of open educational resources for higher education created by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. Search collections or create and collaborate to improve instruction.

• The OAPEN Library contains freely accessible academic books, mainly in the area of Humanities and Social Sciences. OAPEN has books in multiple languages and covering a large variety of topics.
• There is a range of licensing for the books, but each books is clearly marked with the license.

These books were developed following traditional textbook publishing methods, including peer review, editorial support, and creation of ancillary content. These books are available in multiple formats (PDF, print on demand, on the Web) and are licensed to be revised and remixed by faculty who want create a custom solution for a course.

is a site designed to help you understand the OER movement and find OER. They have links for finding textbooks, content, images and video, as well as stories from faculty who have adopted OER in their classrooms.

Pressbooks is the versatile, user-friendly publishing platform educators rely on to create, adapt and share accessible, interactive, web-first books. They have over 5,000 books available in many subject areas.

An online journal and not-for-profit project dedicated "to the exploration of curious and compelling works from the history of art, literature, and ideas." The project specifically focuses on works that are in the public domain, and therefore available for inclusion in courses as open educational resources.

This collection includes books written specifically for Saylor.org as well as the original editions of the FlatWorldKnowledge textbooks (subsequent editions are only offered for purchase).

The Teaching Commons showcases high-quality open educational resources from leading colleges and universities and makes them available to educators and students around the world. Curated by librarians and their institutions and hosted by bepress.

This site is a clearinghouse of links to books housed in various locations, including OpenStax, Saylor and others, with over 140 books. To be on the list, the books must be used by author's institution and by at least one other institution. They also create and peer review their own collection.

VTechWorks provides global access to Virginia Tech scholarship. VTechWorks includes journal articles, books, theses, dissertations, conference papers, slide presentations, technical reports, working papers, administrative documents, videos, images, and more by faculty, students, and staff. Write vtechworks@vt.edu to get help adding your content to VTechWorks. Read an article about VTechWorks or visit the Open@VT blog to learn about current VTechWorks activities.