Research Guides: A Guide to Open Educational Resources (OER): Search for OER

Metafinders

The Mason OER Metafinder allows you to simultaneously search across the multiple OER repositories (e.g., MERLOT II, OAOpen.org, OER Commons, OpenStax CNX, etc.) as well as many open archival repositories (e.g. HathiTrust, Internet Archive, Project Gutenberg, etc.).

Openly Available Sources Integrated Search (OASIS) is a search tool that aims to make the discovery of open content easier. OASIS currently searches open content from 52 different sources and contains 155,375 records. Great place to search when you know what type (audio, textbook, etc.) of material you are looking for.

OER Repositories

These OER repositories include textbooks, course materials, videos and more. They are some of the best places to start your search.

Digital Public Library of America (DPLA)
Contains links to a wide range of multimedia objects form libraries, archives and museums around the United States.
The copyright status of items vary because it is collected from many sources. However, many items are public domain or available for re-use, and there is information in a "rights" field for each item.
MERLOT
One of the biggest OER repositories, but a bit unwieldy and difficult to search. Use limiting options on the left side of results page.
OER Commons
Offers a variety of OER at a variety of levels and subjects. Use limiters on left side of results page.
Teaching Commons
The Teaching Commons brings together high-quality open educational resources from leading colleges and universities. Curated by librarians and their institutions, the Teaching Commons includes open access textbooks, course materials, lesson plans, multimedia, and more.
TESSA (Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa)
A bank of OER, linked to the school curriculum, and designed to support teachers and teacher educators in developing active approaches to learning. The network is co-ordinated by The Open University, UK. Contains links to other Africa-centered OER.

Texts

American Institute of Mathematics
Lists open textbooks by course title. All the books have been judged to meet the evaluation criteria set by the AIM editorial board.
BCcampus OpenED
BCCampus OpenEd publishes open textbooks largely designed for use in first and second year undergraduate courses.
College Open Textbooks
a collaborative of educational organizations pushing the use of open textbooks to community and two-year colleges.
OAPEN
The OAPEN Library contains freely accessible academic books, mainly in the area of humanities and social sciences.
OpenStax College
A nonprofit based at Rice University offers open textbooks in math, science, social sciences & humanities.
Open SUNY Textbooks
Open SUNY Textbooks is an open access textbook publishing initiative established by State University of New York libraries and supported by SUNY Innovative Instruction Technology Grants.
Open Textbook Library
Hundreds of complete, open college-level textbooks. Many include peer-reviews.
Project Gutenberg
offers over 56,000 free eBooks most of which are now in the public domain. Great resource for historical and classic texts.
Unglue It
A collection of openly licensed eBooks on a variety of academic and non-academic topics.

Open Courseware & Materials

LibreTexts
The LibreTexts project is a multi-institutional collaborative effort to improve education at all levels of higher learning by developing Open Access Resources. Use the top navigation to switch subject areas.
MIT OpenCourseWare
MIT OpenCourseWare makes the materials used in the teaching of MIT's subjects available on the Web.
Open Course Library
from Washington State University, is a collection of educational materials – including textbooks, syllabi, course activities, readings, and assessments.
OpenCulture
1,300 free online courses from the world's leading universities -- Stanford, Yale, MIT, Harvard, Berkeley, Oxford and more.
Open Learning Initiative
The Open Learning Initiative is a grant-funded group at Carnegie Mellon University, offering innovative online courses to anyone who wants to learn or teach.
Open Yale Courses
provides free and open access to a selection of introductory courses taught by teachers and scholars at Yale University.
The Orange Grove
Florida's Open Education Resource Repository
nanoHUB
nanoHUB provides simulations, online presentations, cutting-edge nanoHUB-U short courses, animations, teaching materials, and more. Focused on computational nanotechnology.