Affordable and Open Educational Resources Toolkit

Best Bets for finding Open Educational Resources 

B.C. Open Collection - Free, open, and customizable materials by course or subject

Open Textbook Library - Open textbooks licensed by authors and publishers to be freely used and adapted. Part of the Open Education Network.

Opendora - digital collection of open educational resources for Minnesota State faculty and librarians. Contains textbooks, lecture notes, syllabi, reading lists, and videos

OpenStax - collection of openly licensed college textbooks out of Rice University

Pressbooks Directory - searchable catalog of over 5,500 open access books. Many include interactive H5P learning activities to engage learners.

Additional OER directories:

• MERLOT Open Textbook
• Milne Open Textbooks
• OER Commons
• Saylor Academy Open Textbooks
• Textbook Equity Open Education

Finding Openly Licensed Images

Flickr: The Commons - a collection of freely licensed photos from cultural heritage institutions and individuals

National Gallery of Art - view and download image of works in their permanent collection in the public domain 

Smithsonian Open Access - download, share, and reuse millions of the Smithsonian’s images. Access more than 4.5 million 2D and 3D digital items from their collections. This includes images and data from across the Smithsonian’s 21 museums, nine research centers, libraries, archives, and the National Zoo.

CC Search - Contains over 500 million images with the ability to limit by license type (public domain, CC0, or Creative Common), source, image type, file type, aspect ration, and image size. Also contains audio and video.

Library of Congress Free to Use and Reuse Sets - a portal of digital items from the Library's digial collections that are free to use and reuse 

Additional photo collections:

• Morguefile
• Pixabay
• Noun Project (icon collection)
• Unsplash 

Diverse and Inclusive Images

• Disabled and Here Collection - This is a disability-led effort to provide free & inclusive stock photos and illustrations celebrating disabled Black, Indigenous, people of color (BIPOC).
• Gender Spectrum Collection - stock photo library featuring images of trans and non-binary models that go beyond the clichés. 
• Human Development Institute - Public domain images of all people with disabilities in all aspects of society. 
• Nappy -  high-res photos of black and brown people in the public domain 

Tips for finding quality OERs

• Seek out titles with reviews or titles that have been through a review process
• Look for legitimate authors and insitutuitons whenever possible.
• Ensure it meets accessibility standards
• Ensure it's licensed and is in a file format that allows for adaptations, modifications, rearrangements, and updates
• Seek smaller portions or chapters that can be compiled together rather than a complete textbook as a perfect fit for your course

Found a resource or group of resources you'd like to modify or adapt? Check out the Open Education Network's guide, Modifying an Open Textbook: What You Need to Know.