External Resources

Many quality resources are available for your use at no cost. The following lists some of the major resources for free textbooks and supplemental materials which can be used in your courses in lieu of purchased content.

Textbooks

  • Ohiolink A-Z Course Materials List - OhioLINK is collating a growing list of resources (for potential classroom use) in an A-Z resource list. These resources include open educational resources, open access materials, and OhioLINK resources which can be used by UA faculty and students at no cost.
  • Open Textbook Network - The Open Textbook Network (OTN) is a growing collection of free, peer-reviewed, and completely open textbooks. OTN is a great resource to use because they collect quality resources from various OER publishers in one convenient place. OhioLINK (including UA!) is an official member and partner of OTN.
  • BCcampus OpenEd - Started in 2012 through the government in British Columbia, Canada, BCcampus OpenEd has an open textbook library of over 200 titles.
  • Affordable Learning Exchange at OSU - Textbooks authored through the Affordable Learning Exchange at The Ohio State University can be found here. This growing resource features about 50 open textbooks ready for use.
  • Center For Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction - The Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction provides access to over 50 open textbooks covering a variety of legal subjects via their eLangdell Bookstore.
  • LibreTexts - The Libretexts project is designed as a collaborative OER platform to simultaneously enable the dissemination and evaluation of existing resources and as a dynamic “courseware” to facilitate new education developments and approaches, with an emphasis on data-driven assessment of student learning and performance. Since its inception ten years ago, the Libretexts has been exponentially growing and currently reaches over 60 million students per year and is the most visited chemistry website and online OER textbook resource in the world.
  • OpenStax - Created and maintained by Rice University, OpenStax is an open textbook publisher that currently provides access to 45 open textbooks covering a variety of subject areas.

Supplemental Resources

  • Digital Public Library of America - The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) provides free digital access to a variety of materials (e.g., books, photographs, maps, newspapers, art, and more) covering life in America. This is a great resource to find primary materials and supplemental materials to pair with an open textbook.
  • Project Gutenberg - Project Gutenberg provides access to over 56,000 free e-books. This resource contains many types of e-books (including literature) and includes many books no longer covered by copyright (published prior to 1923) which includes classics such as Pride and Prejudice.
  • Ohio Memory - The Ohio Memory project features over 700,000 free digital resources (e.g., photos, maps, etc.) that cover all aspects of Ohio’s rich history.
  • Library of Congress Digital Collections - The Library of Congress has many digitally curated collections that are free to the public. These collections include various types of materials and are a fantastic source for primary materials.
  • Saylor.org - Saylor Academy works to offer free and open courses for everyone. The courses listed on Saylor link to OER resources which can be adopted for your use.
  • Lumen Learning - Lumen is an OER content provider dedicated to providing students with access to affordable materials. This includes a number of open textbooks which are housed under their “courses.”
  • MIT OpenCourseWare - The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) publishes all of their course content via OpenCourseWare. This content is completely free and open for use. Content includes lectures, assignments, exams, textbooks, and much more.
  • OER Commons - OER Commons collects and organizes a variety of OER resources including open textbooks. There are over 50,000 OER resources collected in the OER Commons.
  • Project Muse - Project MUSE provides many open access e-books published by university presses and scholarly societies. These open books are easily downloadable and cover my subject areas.
  • University of Akron Archival Services Digital Collections - Archival Services of University Libraries collects, preserves, and provides access to important historical resources that primarily document the history of The University of Akron and the region. As part of their mission, Archival Services digitizes select historical resources for preservation and access purposes and makes them available online to promote the collections and make them more readily available to a broader audience.