OER on the Open Web 

Searching for OER on the open web is a great way to get started. Combining keywords describing your discipline or learning objective along with terms like OER, open educational resources, open textbooks, etc. will pull results from a wide range of OER repositories, collections, OER textbook producers, and other educational sites.

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OER Producers and Repositories

You may also want to search through specific OER producers (organizations that create and distribute OER content) or OER repositories (collections of OER materials brought together on one platform to improve discoverability). Some of these sites will be focused more on OER textbooks, while others will include ancillaries such as slides, test banks, case studies, problem sets, images, or even entire courses.

We’ve provided links to several of the most widely used OER search tools, and librarians are also available to help you find OER materials that will meet your teaching needs.

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OER Producers

  • Open Stax is a nonprofit organization based out of Rice University that strives to increase student access to educational materials by producing openly licensed textbooks for college courses. OpenStax textbooks are among the most used open textbooks across the country and often come with important free ancillary materials for instructors, such as PowerPoint slides and homework answers.

  • BCcampus Open Collection indexes hundreds of open textbooks and links to available ancillary resources, faculty reviews, and editable files. BCcampus is the organization that supports all post-secondary institutions of British Columbia their efforts to improve teaching practices, and they are a leader in the open movement.

  • Milne Open Textbooks is a catalog of open textbooks authored and peer-reviewed by SUNY faculty and staff.

  • LibreTexts is supported by the Department of Education’s Open Textbook Pilot project and features OER in a range of subjects. Ancillary materials include lab experiments, case studies, visualizations and simulations, demonstrations and techniques, and interactive fossils.

OER Repositories

  • Open Textbook Library is a collection of open textbooks maintained by the Open Textbook Network.

  • OER Commons indexes a wide variety of OER materials.

  • MERLOT links to OER textbooks, simulations, assessment tools, tutorials, quizzes, and more.

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