Open Textbooks

Mason OER Metafinder
Meta search engine for OERs. Simultaneously search College Open Textbooks, DOAB, Hathi Trust, Merlot, MIT Open Courseware, OER Commons, Open Textbook Library, Project Gutenberg, and more.

College Open Textbooks
"College Open Textbooks (COT) is a project of the Silicon Valley Education Foundation and the Open Doors Group. The COT Collaborative is collection of colleges, governmental agencies, education non-profits, and other education-related organizations that are focused on the mission of driving awareness, adoptions**, and affordability of open textbooks. Our focus is on community colleges and other 2-year institutions of higher education and the first two years (lower division) of 4-year institutions" (from home page). COT publishes peer reviewed open textbooks used around the country. It also provides links to open textbooks from multiple repositories and content creators' websites.

Flatworld Knowledge
"The #1 Publisher of Open College Textbooks" (from home page). Visit their catalog. All open textbooks are written by experts in the field, peer reviewed, and are professionally edited and developed. Students have the option of transforming these open textbooks into audio files, flash cards, and more.

OpenStax College
An initiative of Rice University, OpenStax College is a non-profit organization committed to improving access to higher education by providing access to free, quality open textbooks. OpenStax open textbooks are developed and peer reviewed by educators to ensure readability, accuracy, and fit with your course.

Open SUNY Textbooks
"The mission of Open SUNY Textbooks is to provide an academic-friendly publishing model and infrastructure which supports faculty adoption, remixing, and creation of open educational resources (OER) and courses" (from website). Provides a catalog of current and upcoming open textbooks published by the State University of New York (SUNY) OER Services.

Open Textbook Library (University of Minnesota)

"In an effort to reduce costs for students, the College of Education and Human Development has created this catalog of open textbooks to be reviewed by faculty members. Read full press release

"Open textbooks are complete textbooks released under a Creative Commons, or similar, license.

"Instructors can customize open textbooks to fit their course needs by remixing, editing, and adding their own content. Students can access free digital versions or purchase low-cost print copies of open textbooks" (from home page).

Open Textbooks (Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources)
Links to open textbooks in a variety of disciplines. Appropriate for four year or two year institutions

Open Education Database
A list of 80 OER tools for open textbook publishing and collaborative online course development initiatives. "Includes 80 online resources that you can use to learn how to build or participate in a collaborative educational effort that focuses on publication and development of those materials" (from website).

Minnesota Libraries Publishing Project
"Thanks to your library, you can now create, edit, format and generate print-ready and eBook formats for your book—all for free--using Pressbooks." (from homepage).
 

"Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching, learning or research materials that are in the public domain or that can be used under an intellectual property license that allows re-use or adaptation (e.g Creative Commons). The potential of opening up educational resources for use and adaptation by everyone, especially those in resource-poor environments, is a great opportunity to achieve quality education for all."
UNESCO, ICT in Education

"Open educational resources include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge."
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

This video, produced by the South African creative agency Blinktower, won first prize in the "Why Open Education Matters" video contest. To watch all of the videos about open education submitted for this contest, click here.