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Textbook Alternatives & Open Educational Resources (OER): Open Textbook Collections

Adoption Finder

ADOPTION FINDER: Open Textbooks for B.C. Post-Secondary Courses
"This finder was created to help post-secondary instructors identify open textbooks currently in use (adopted) at colleges, institutes, and universities in British Columbia that might be suitable for their course, as well as, transferable courses based on the course transfer agreements in this province. Each adopted textbook is matched to a course, identified by its course code." Since British Columbia institutions of higher education use a large number of open textbooks, this list could also be helpful to non-BC based instructors who wish to find open textbooks that might match their courses.

Open Textbook Collections

American Institute of Mathematics (AIM) Open Textbook Initiative
The American Institute of Mathematics (AIM) seeks to encourage the adoption of open source and open access mathematics textbooks. The AIM Editorial Board has developed evaluation criteria to identify the books that are suitable for use in traditional university courses. The Editorial Board maintains a list of Approved Textbooks which have been judged to meet these criteria.
B.C. Open Collection by BCcampus
"The collection includes courses and textbooks, and new resources are being added all the time."
Big Ten Open Books
"Big Ten Open Books is a collaboration between the university presses and libraries of the Big Ten Academic Alliance. The first collection is on the subject of Gender and Sexuality studies. Participating presses are Indiana University Press, Michigan State University Press, Northwestern University Press, Purdue University Press, University of Michigan Press, and University of Wisconsin Press."
All titles in the Big Ten Open Books are open access - free to read and reuse.
Boundless
"Boundless helps students learn better by connecting them with the wealth of high quality, openly licensed, free educational content, as well as the tools they need to succeed."
Directory of Open Access Books
"The primary aim of DOAB is to increase discoverability of Open Access books."
Knowledge Unlatched
" . . . by working together libraries can create a sustainable route to Open Access for scholarly books and secure long-term cost savings for their own institutions by sharing the costs of making HSS monographs available on a Creative Commons licence. Supporting Open Access through Knowledge Unlatched will not cost more than simply purchasing a more traditionally published title."
LibreTexts
"The LibreTexts mission is to unite students, faculty and scholars in a cooperative effort to develop an easy-to-use online platform for the construction, customization, and dissemination of open educational resources (OER) to reduce the burdens of unreasonable textbook costs to our students and society."
Library of Congress Open Access Books
"This is a growing collection of contemporary open access e-books. The books in this collection cover a wide range of subjects, including history, music, poetry, technology, and works of fiction. Most of the books in this collection were published in English, but there are some titles in other languages. All of the books in this collection were published under open access licenses and may be read online or downloaded as a PDF or as an EPUB."
MERLOT Open Access Textbooks
Milne Open Textbooks (formerly Open SUNY)
"Milne Library Publishing at SUNY Geneseo manages and maintains Milne Open Textbooks, a catalog of open textbooks authored and peer-reviewed by SUNY faculty and staff."
National Academies Press
"We offer more than 4,000 titles in PDF format. All of these PDFs can be downloaded for free by the chapter or the entire book."
OhioLINK Open Course Content Library (Textbooks)
A collection of open textbooks organized by OhioLINK, including a smaller collection of Ohio-produced open textbooks.
OpenStax
"We publish high-quality, peer-reviewed, openly licensed college textbooks that are absolutely free online and low cost in print."
Open Textbook Library
"Open textbooks are textbooks that have been funded, published, and licensed to be freely used, adapted, and distributed. These books have been reviewed by faculty from a variety of colleges and universities to assess their quality."
Sources for Full Text Classics (Eastern Michigan University)
Includes "links to sites that offer full text of classic books."

Learn More About Open Textbooks

Community College Consortium for OERs

Ancillary Materials

More Than Textbooks: Exploring Ancillary OER Materials
Created by Amber Hoye, provides strategies for finding materials to accompany open textbooks or other open collections of readings.

Open course platforms

Commercial Platforms that Utilize OER Assessment Tool
This link provides links and information to both OER content hosted by commercial textbook entities, but also courseware platforms that are open and could host assignments, quizzes, etc. Useful if you are considering going with an open textbook, but afraid of losing a publisher provided course site.

Open Textbooks by Discipline

OER by Discipline Directory (BCcampus Open Education)
OER by Discipline Guide: McMaster University
Open Textbooks for Engineering (American Society for Engineering Education)
"The Scholarly Communications Committee from the Engineering Libraries Division of the American Society for Engineering Education has created a new online resource that provides links to open textbooks in the engineering field. This resource aggregates information from around 20 different OER websites and organizes it by engineering discipline and, in some cases, by subdiscipline. To keep the scope manageable, we have presently limited it to open textbooks, although it is possible that we will add other types of open resources as time goes on."

Textbook Alternatives & Open Educational Resources (OER): Open Textbook Collections

Adoption Finder

Open Textbook Collections

Learn More About Open Textbooks

Ancillary Materials

Open course platforms

Open Textbooks by Discipline

See also this LibGuide