Subject Guides: Open Resources: Open Educational Resources

Open Educational Resources, or "OER" are defined as "teaching, learning, and research materials that are either (a) in the public domain or (b) licensed in a manner that provides everyone with free and perpetual permission to engage in the "5R activities".

The 5R activities are:

Retain – make, own, and control a copy of the resource
Reuse – use your original, revised, or remixed copy of the resource publicly
Revise – edit, adapt, and modify your copy of the resource
Remix – combine your original or revised copy of the resource with other existing material to create something new
Redistribute – share copies of your original, revised, or remixed copy of the resource with others

(from the Creative Commons website)

OER textbooks are not necessarily in the public domain, but are freely available to download and use following the Creative Commons Licensing (usually just cite!)

Most of the time their license allows educators to share and remix content, but check each text individually to be sure.

Creative Commons website -OER

Where to find OER Textbooks

Open Textbook Library
"Open textbooks are textbooks that have been funded, published, and licensed to be freely used, adapted, and distributed. These books have been reviewed by faculty from a variety of colleges and universities to assess their quality. These books can be downloaded for no cost, or printed at low cost. All textbooks are either used at multiple higher education institutions; or affiliated with an institution, scholarly society, or professional organization."
OpenStax
OpenStax is a nonprofit based at Rice University with the mission to improve student access to education. Their first openly licensed college textbook was published in 2012, and their library has since scaled to more than 25 books for college and AP courses used by hundreds of thousands of students.
Muhlenberg OERs
A catalog of Open Educational Resources written or edited by Muhlenberg Faculty & students.
Directory of Open Access Books
Directory of peer reviewed open access books submitted by academic publishers. Books are free to read and share non-commercially, but licenses vary.
MIT Open Courseware
Web-based publication of MIT's course content. Some of these online textbooks are open-licensed electronic versions of print books. Others are self-published online books, or course notes which are so thorough that they serve as an alternative to a conventional textbook.
Wikibooks
Wikibooks is "the open-content textbooks collection that anyone can edit."
MILNE Open Textbooks
MILNE Open Textbooks (formerly known as SUNY Open Textbooks) is an open access textbook publishing initiative established by State University of New York libraries and supported by SUNY Innovative Instruction Technology Grants. This pilot initiative published high-quality, cost-effective course resources by engaging faculty as authors and peer-reviewers, and libraries as publishing service and infrastructure.