Research Guides: Textbook Affordability and Open Educational Resources (OER): Finding OER

Finding OER

Searching for OER on your subject is always the first step in any OER project!

This video from Open Oregon gives "a few strategies to spend less time searching and more time redesigning your course around your new open content."

We recommend making Open Oregon's Resource Tracker your first stop in your research process:

Open Oregon Resource Tracker
The Open Oregon Resource Tracker lists course materials that Oregon instructors are using to reduce textbook costs in their courses. This is a searchable tool that includes course codes and links to resources. Use it to explore OER in use in Oregon right now!

Already using OER in your course? Add your information to the resource tracker by filling out the Open Oregon Resource Tracker Form.

There are also plenty of OER repositories to search in! Below is an interactive searching tool that allows you to search within some of the top OER repositories:

OER Repositories

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.
OAPEN
OAPEN builds a quality controlled collection of Open Access books, mainly in the area of Humanities and Social Sciences.
Milne Open Textbooks
Milne Library Publishing at SUNY Geneseo manages and maintains Milne Open Textbooks, a catalog of open textbooks authored and peer-reviewed by SUNY faculty and staff.
BC Campus Open Ed
A curated list of open textbooks used and/or reviewed by BC faculty.
LibreTexts
Nearly 400 textbooks over 13 subject areas that have been carefully curated.
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.
IntechOpen
IntechOpen is a leading global publisher of Journals and Books within the fields of Science, Technology and Medicine. Founded in 2004, IntechOpen was built by scientists, for scientists and provides a collaborative environment for peer-reviewed scientific content and book publishing of academic research, giving scientific thinking its home.

This is a perfect place to start your search - the Mason OER Metafinder searches 16 different directories, repositories, and other places to find quality OER. This list includes - American Memory Project (Library of Congress), College Open Textbooks, Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB), Merlot, MIT OpenCourseware, OER commons, and many more.

Milne Library at SUNY Geneseo has developed OASIS (Openly Available Sources Integrated Search), a search tool with more than 155,000+ records from 52 different sources that have been carefully selected in collaboration with SUNY OER Services.

OER Commons
Well-known and robust digital library for all things OER.
OpenStax
OpenStax is a nonprofit based at Rice University.
Directory of Open Access Repositories (DOAR)
Open access repositories from around the world.
Find OER - Community College Consortium for OER
This link provides you with sites that collect open resources: open textbooks, open courseware, and other OER.

Creative Commons
Offers many free and open resources for use in classes. Learn more about the types of licenses for OER use.
The Gender Spectrum Collection
The Gender Spectrum Collection is a stock photo library featuring images of trans and non-binary models. These images have been made available through a Creative Commons license. Per the terms of the Creative Commons license, you may not create derivative work from the images or use the images for commercial purposes. Beyond these basic license stipulations, it is vital for anyone using this resource to make appropriate contextual decisions.
Google Image Search
Search for a topic. Then select "Search tools." Next, select "Usage rights." Select whichever CC license makes sense for your needs.
Library of Congress Prints & Photographs
The LOC does not own the copyright licenses to these images, so it is up to you to determine if you can use a particular image. Many will not have a free license.
Morguefile
Morguefile is a "free image exchange for creative professionals and teachers to use in their work"
Open Clip Art Library
All images on this site are in the public domain. Learn more on their "Licenses" page.
Pexels
All photos on Pexels can be used for free for commercial and noncommercial use. Attribution is not required. You can modify the photos.
Pixabay
Over 1.6 million royalty free stock photos and videos. All contents are released under the Pixabay License, which makes them safe to use without asking for permission or giving credit to the artist.
Smithsonian Open Access
Nearly 3 million 2D and 3D digital items, including images and data from Smithsonian's 19 museums, 9 research centers, libraries, archives and the National Zoo.
Unsplash
All high-resolution photos are free to download and use under the Unsplash License (available on their website).
Wikimedia Commons
Wikimedia Commons is "a media file repository making available public domain and freely-licensed educational media content (images, sound and video clips) to everyone, in their own language."

Open Educational Resources Unit (OERU) - Oregon State
OERU includes learning modules, reusable digital components, and open textbooks. Oregon State University.
University of Oregon - Scholar's Band
Scholars' Bank is the open access repository for the intellectual work of faculty, students and staff at the University of Oregon and partner institution collections.
OER @ CCC
A list of resources that CCC faculty created or are using in their classrooms.
Open Oregon Resources
Resources used or create by Oregon community college or university instructors.
PDXOPEN: Open Educational Resources
Open access textbooks developed by Portland State University faculty.

Digital Commons Network
The Digital Commons Network brings together free, full-text scholarly articles, book chapters, dissertations, and other original scholarly work from hundreds of universities and colleges worldwide.
Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB)
The primary aim of DOAB is to increase discoverability of Open Access books.
Merlot Virtual Labs
A "one-stop-shop: for growing collection of free and fee-based virtual labs.
Internet Archive Scholar
This full text search index includes over 25 million research articles and other scholarly documents preserved in the Internet Archive. The collection spans from digitized copies of eighteenth century journals through the latest Open Access conference proceedings and pre-prints crawled from the World Wide Web