Open Textbooks, OER & Other Open or Free Resources for Faculty
A guide to exploring open textbook options for faculty.
- OER Basics
- Finding OER
- OER People and Projects at Kirkwood
- Creating, Editing & Hosting OER
- PressbooksEDU
- Creative Commons Licenses
- Copyright & Fair Use
- OER & Students
- OER Projects at other Colleges
Other Helpful Resources
- Text Readability Rating: Readable.ioType or paste a portion of the text and you'll receive a rating on readability, including an approximate grade level
Get help with OER adoption from the Library
Ask for help with OER adoption or use! Just fill out this form and we'll get back to you:
Complete this free self-paced OER tutorial created by Kirkwood librarians just for our faculty:
Search for Open Textbooks & Other OER
Kirkwood's own T4LT Podcasters have a great 3-part series on resources for locating OER:
All-in-one meta-searches
- OASIS search toolAll-in-one search tool for finding OER. OASIS currently searches open content from 52 different sources and contains 155,375 records.
- Mason OER MetafinderAll-in-one search tool for finding OER. Searches many popular OER repositories and referatories such as MERLOT, OER Commons, and the Open Textbook Library.
- Directory of Open Access BooksDOAB is a community-driven discovery service that indexes and provides access to scholarly, peer-reviewed open access books and helps users to find trusted open access book publishers.
Open Textbook sources, often with ancillary materials
- OpenStax CollegeOpenStax is a place for instructors who simply want an open textbook that’s ready to go. These textbooks are free to use online or downloaded in PDF format. They also have print and bound versions available for purchase (as of now the price varies by title, between around $30 and $60). The quality of these texts is very good. They are authored by faculty and have been carefully edited and peer reviewed. They also have ancillary materials to accompany each text.
- BC Open CollectionA curated repository of open textbooks and course material packages. Formerly BCcampus, British Columbia.
- Lumen LearningA unique open resource, providing a package of online course materials for many widely-offered college level courses. Now provides online interactive homework and study help systems for courses with Candela, Waymaker, and OHM.
- Open Textbook LibraryHosted by the University of Minnesota, focuses solely on open textbooks, with faculty reviews where available.
- Pressbooks DirectoryThis directory searches thousands of books, mostly OER, from colleges all over the country.
- LibreTextsLibreTexts takes a different approach by integrating an editing and remixing interface with the content. Much OER content is already on the site and can be remixed into a custom text using their drag-and-drop interface. They have a blog and a YouTube channel with lots of examples and how-to descriptions.
- Milne Open TextbooksFormerly "Open SUNY Textbooks". Managed and maintained by Milne Library Publishing at SUNY Geneseo. State University of New York's open textbook publishing initiative repository.
- Saylor Academy BookshelfAnother site that focuses mostly on open textbooks
Other Free or Open Licensed eBooks
- Kirkwood Library eBooksUse the Library search to discover open access books in our eBook collections. Type your topic into the search box, then select the "Content limit" on the left side of the screen that says "Open Access".
- Open Research LibraryLarge collection of academic titles. All are open licensed and free to access and download.
- Project MUSE Open AccessIn addition to the subscription content on Project MUSE available to the Kirkwood Community, Project MUSE also contains an open access collection of academic books and journals freely available to any user for access or download.
- Project GutenbergBooks in the public domain (most of these are books old enough that their copyright has expired).
- Open LibraryAn open project, user-contributed files and fixes, books available in many different formats. Wonderful online reading interface!
- NCBI BookshelfThis is a service from the U.S. National Library of Medicine and National Institutes of Health. It provides free access to over 700 texts in life science and healthcare.
Other OER search sites
- CCCOER: Community College Consortium for Open Educational ResourcesThis consortium website offers a wide variety of resources for faculty looking for OER, workshops, or colleagues to connect with. Kirkwood is a member of this consortium.
- MERLOT"Free and open" online learning materials - mostly bite-size pieces rather than whole textbooks.
- OER CommonsFind a wide variety of open resources, mostly in bite-size chunks for easy collection and remixing.
- OER Commons: Iowa Colleges and UniversitiesA subset of OER Commons. "OER in these collections have been adopted, created, or recommended by faculty in the state of Iowa."
- OER in Use Across IowaThis page lists course materials that Iowa colleges and universities are using to reduce textbooks costs in their courses.
Discipline-Specific OER Sources
- In addition to these resources, see the OER People and Projects at Kirkwood guide.
- OER by Discipline from San Bernardino Valley College: an excellent place to start your OER search!
Business
- Prendismo Collection"The Prendismo Collection offers access to the world’s premiere collection of digital video content on business, leadership and entrepreneurship."
- OATCJ: Open Access Teaching Case JournalCollection of teaching cases about protagonists in real companies. Great source for case studies to use in your courses!
Career & Technical Fields
- AMSER: Applied Math and Science Educational Repository"AMSER is a portal of educational resources and services built specifically for use by those in Community and Technical Colleges but free for anyone to use. AMSER is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) as part of the National Science Digital Library, and is being created by a team of project partners led by Internet Scout."
- BCcampusBC Campus has a growing collection of Career and Technical materials. Search a topic or click "Browse", "Find open textbooks". See "Trade" topic near the bottom of the subject list.
- National Science Digital LibraryThe National Science Digital Library provides high quality online educational resources for teaching and learning, with current emphasis on the sciences, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines
- SkillsCommons: Workforce Development Digital LibraryA growing repository of materials developed by Federal TAACCCT Grant recipient colleges. Some great resources here! Includes these industries: Construction; Educational Services; Health Care & Social Assistance; Administrative & Support Services; Waste Management Services; Professional, Scientific & Technical Services; Information Technologies; Mining, Quarrying, Oil & Gas Extraction; Repair & Maintenance; Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing & Hunting; Manufacturing.
Language Learning
- Center for Open Educational Resources and Language Learning"The COERLL is one of 15 National Foreign Language Resource Centers funded by the US Department of Education. The overall mission of these federally-funded centers is to improve the teaching and learning of foreign languages by producing resources (materials and best practices) that can be profitably employed in a variety of settings."
Math and Sciences
- AMSER: Applies Math and Science Educational Repository"AMSER is a portal of educational resources and services built specifically for use by those in Community and Technical Colleges but free for anyone to use. AMSER is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) as part of the National Science Digital Library, and is being created by a team of project partners led by Internet Scout."
- American Institute of Mathematics: Approved Open Textbooks List"Open-source or open-access textbooks that have been judged to meet the evaluation criteria set by the AIM editorial board."
- The Chem Collective"The ChemCollective is organized by a group of faculty and staff at Carnegie Mellon who are interested in using, assessing, and creating engaging online activities for chemistry education."
- ChemWiki"The Dynamic Chemistry e-Textbook"
- Explorations: An Open Invitation to Biological AnthropologyHuman Evolution or Biological Anthropology -- A large nationwide project to create an interactive textbook and supplemental materials for this course
- LyryxOpen Textbooks in Business, Economics, Math, & Statistics. Textbooks and supplements are accessible at no cost. Optional software to accompany the texts is available at a low cost.
- MyOpenMathMyOpenMath runs on the open source, IMathAS platform, providing free hosted use of this platform in support of free, open textbooks like the ones listed on OpenTextBookStore.com. The intent is to provide classroom use of the platform, without any required cost to students, for schools wanting a managed install of the IMathAS platform, and to provide students self-study opportunities.
- National Science Digital LibraryThe National Science Digital Library provides high quality online educational resources for teaching and learning, with current emphasis on the sciences, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines
- OHM (Online Homework Manager)An excellent and low priced alternative to online math homework systems. Based on OpenStax mathematical textbooks.
- Open Textbook Store"OpenTextBookStore was created by educators frustrated with the time involved in finding adoptable open textbooks, with the hope to make open textbook adoption easier for other faculty. Just to be clear, we are not a publisher. This is just a listing site for publicly available open textbooks, maintained by a teacher. Print copies are made available through third party print-on-demand companies. Many of the courses have course packages available through MyOpenMath.com, which provides free online homework for several open math textbooks."
- Scottsdale (AZ) Community College Math BlogA list of Open and Sharable Resources and tools utilized by the SCC Math Department
- Math The WorldYouTube video series: "At Math The World, we are on a mission to answer the age-old student question, "When will I ever use this?" We're here to bridge the gap between theoretical math and real-life applications. Our videos take everyday questions and harness the power of mathematical modeling to provide insightful and meaningful answers. "
Nursing and Allied Health
- Open RN Project"The Open RN project is led by Chippewa Valley Technical College as part of the Wisconsin Technical College System (WTCS) consortium. OER nursing textbooks and virtual simulations are collaboratively developed by faculty based on the WTCS State Nursing curriculum and the current NCLEX-RN Test Plan. Textbooks undergo national peer review by faculty, deans, industry members, and nursing students to ensure the content is accurate and relevant, written in clear language for pre-licensure nursing students, and based on current, evidence-based practices."
- OpenStax Nursing Textbook Collection"Simple to use, simple to adopt. Our nursing textbooks are designed to meet the standard scope and sequence requirements of their respective courses – and are 100% free online. Complete with free resources for educators (like lecture slides, test banks, instructor answer keys, and more), all OpenStax textbooks are fully customizable."
- OER Nursing Essentials (Texas Higher Ed and OpenStax)Nursing textbooks developed as part of the ONE Project, a collaboration between the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board and OpenStax at Rice University. Includes ONE Summit recordings and a collaborative group space for community engagement. Resources are primarily aligned with the AACN essentials curriculum.
- List: Interactive OER for healthcare studentsCurated short list of recent OER on healthcare topics with interactive elements.
- HEAL (Health Education Assets Library)"A digital library of multimedia teaching resources for the health sciences. HEAL provides access to tens of thousands of images, videoclips, animations, presentations, and audio files that support healthcare education."
- SkillsCommons: Workforce Development Digital LibraryA growing repository of materials developed by Federal TAACCCT Grant recipient colleges. Some great resources here! Includes these industries: Construction; Educational Services; Health Care & Social Assistance; Administrative & Support Services; Waste Management Services; Professional, Scientific & Technical Services; Information Technologies; Mining, Quarrying, Oil & Gas Extraction; Repair & Maintenance; Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing & Hunting; Manufacturing.
- NCBI BookshelfThis is a service from the U.S. National Library of Medicine and National Institutes of Health. It provides free access to over 700 texts in life science and healthcare.
- Intech Open eBooks in Health SciencesOpen licensed ebooks
- Free Books 4 DoctorsCollection of links to free medical textbooks across the Web.
Social Sciences
- Noba Project"Teach and learn psychology for free"
Open and/or Free Music, Images, Films & other Media
- Smithsonian Open AccessMore than 4.5 million images from across Smithsonian's 21 museums, 9 research centers, libraries, archives, and the National Zoo. All images licensed for reuse under a Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license. Anyone can download, reuse, and remix images at any time for any use.
- Unsplash"Photos for everyone". Instead of having a Creative Commons license, usage of all photos is governed by the site license, which states photos may be used, for free, without permission, for any use (except creating a similar photo finding service). See license: https://unsplash.com/license
- PixabayFree stock photos, CC0 (Creative Commons Zero license, zero rights reserved)
- PexelsDatabase of free stock photos. CC0 (Creative Commons Zero license, zero rights reserved)
- Internet ArchiveFree Movies, Music, Books & Wayback Machine: exceptional resource!
- HippoCampusMaterials are free but may not be copied or transformed.
- PBS VideoPBS has free streaming video of many of their programs. (Free but not open.)
- Prendismo Collection"The Prendismo Collection offers access to the world’s premiere collection of digital video content on business, leadership and entrepreneurship."
- Last Updated: Apr 30, 2025 9:40 AM
- URL: https://guides.kirkwood.edu/opentextbooks
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