Research Guides: Discovering Open Educational Resources (OER): OER Resources

Finding OER Resources

There are many OER source lists to choose from. One of the challenges of finding OER is the uncertainty of which source list or guide to consult.

Temple University educators should consult their departmental subject specialist librarian for assistance and advice in finding appropriate OER or it may be that other resources, such as a chapter in a library e-book, may contribute to affordable learning material for students.

Library Subject Specialists List
FInd your librarian subject specialist for assistance finding OER.

OER Resource List

BC Campus Open Ed
Links to nearly 100 subject-organized open textbooks
California Open Online Library for Education
Resources for free and open learning materials and textbooks
Cool4ED
Variety of tools to find open textbook but features one for searching a known textbook's ISBN to find related OER.
Community College Consortium for OER
This consortium of over 250 community colleges points toresources that can help faculty get started using open educational resources.
Creative Commons Licensing - Overview
Information compiled by Temple University Libraries to provide a detailed introduction to Creative Commons Licensing
Directory of Open Access Books: DOAB
Thousands of academic, peer-reviewed books and book chapters
InclusiveAccess.org
Get the facts about inclusive access deals that auto-bill students for their textbooks. While it is intended to provide cost savings for students, it also creates challenges for them and faculty.
LibreTexts
Open textbooks form multiple disciplines with an emphasis on 1st and 2nd year courses. It offer WYSIWYG editing of all content and the ability to add/remove content.
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https://libretexts.org/
Mason OER Metafinder
Search engine that searches multiple OER sources with one interface.
MERLOT
A free and open resource designed primarily for faculty and students of higher education. Links to online learning materials are collected here along with assignments and comments to enhance the teaching experience of an exercise
NCBI Bookshelf
Provides free online access to books and documents in life science and healthcare
North Broad Press
A joint publishing project of Temple Libraries and the Temple University Press, the North Broad Press publishes open textbooks authored by Temple University faculty. They are all peer reviewed and freely available to all.
OASIS (Openly Available Sources Integrated Search)
OER search tool to facilitate the discovery of open learning content in different media formats.
OER Commons - Open Textbooks
This catalog contains hundreds of college-level open textbooks from higher education institutions around the world.
Open Textbook Library
A catalog of open access textbooks to be reviewed by faculty members, made available by the University of Minnesota's College of Education and Human Development. All textbooks in this catalog are openly licenses, complete, and available in print at very little cost.
Open Educational Resources in Higher Education
This resource list appears in a journal and hasn't been updated since 2012 but it is a good basic list of resources that are core to OER
OER Commons
Similar to MERLOT it offers all types of learning materials but it is not exclusive to higher education.
OER FAQ
OER FAQ forum hopes to help answer questions about the many facets of OER. The forum covers over 100 FAQs on everything from the basics of Creative Commons licences to OER quality, OER policy and developing OER.
OER Starter Kit
This starter kit has been created to provide instructors with an introduction to the use and creation of open educational resources (OER). The text is broken into five sections: Getting Started, Copyright, Finding OER, Teaching with OER, and Creating OER. Although some chapters contain more advanced content, the starter kit is primarily intended for users who are entirely new to Open Education.
OER World Map
OER World Map shares information on behalf of the worldwide OER community, using local knowledge to describe the OER ecosystem. Built with cutting edge linked open data technology, OER World Map visualizes the world of OER and supports a range of widgets and tools through powerful statistical analysis. Useful for finding/tracking OER legislation at the state level.
OpenStax College Textbooks
Provides access to dozens of textbooks with an emphasis on large enrollment courses.
Open SUNY Textbooks
Offers a limited number of textbooks but a good example of a university run open textbook project.
Open Textbooks Toolkit
The BCcampus Open Textbook Toolkit is your starting point on how to change education with just one textbook. It provides a list of our open textbooks, information and guidelines for adopting and assigning an open textbook
Open Book Publishers
Source of open scholarly monographs. Currently limited number of titles.
Open Culture
Best Free Cultural and Educational Media on the Internet. Hundreds of free books, movies and courses.
Open Educational Resource 2017 Textbook List
List of existing open textbooks organized into academic disciplines.
Orange Grove
Florida's digital repository, it provides access to hundreds of open resources for higher education, organized by subject area.
Pressbooks Directory
This is a searchable file of all known open textbooks published on the Pressbooks platform. Some may be included in other resources on this page but this is a must-search site for open textbooks.
Project CORA: Community of Online Research Assignments
Particularly good for assignments that cover information literacy topics such as evaluation, ethics, etc.
1,000+ Open Textbooks
Duplicates resources found on other sites, such as the Open Textbook Library, but may lead to some additional open textbooks
Steven Bell's OER Links
Keep up with articles, reports, websites and more on this curated list of OER links.
University of Massachusetts Amherst - OER Guide
This resource guide will lead to many additional sources of information and other textbook programs
What Are Open Textbooks?
Information about open textbooks prepared for the California State University system.