There are many OER repositories and databases as well as many freely available online resources that you can use to convert your courses to zero textbook costs. This page lists some of the most useful resources we've found, but is by no means an exhaustive list. If you find a repository or database you find particularly useful, please contact the OER Project Lead for possible inclusion on this website.
ASCCC OER Initiative: Resources organized by discipline that have been created through the OERI.
Libre Commons for Los Rios on LibreTexts: OER created by faculty at all Los Rios colleges.
LibreTexts Commons Full Catalog: Click on Explore the Libraries at the top to select a broad category and then refine your search.
OER Commons: ER Commons is a public digital library of open educational resources. Explore, create, and collaborate with educators around the world to improve curriculum.
Open Textbook Library: The Open Textbook Library provides a growing catalog of free, peer-reviewed, and openly-licensed textbooks.
OpenStax: Based at Rice University OpenStax offers high quality textbooks with adaptive learning technology, designed to improve learning outcomes through personalized educational paths.
Open RN: Open Educational Resources for Nursing from Chippewa Valley Technical College and funded by a Department of Education grant.
MERLOT: The MERLOT system provides access to curated online learning and support materials and content creation tools, led by an international community of educators, learners and researchers.
CC ECHO (CA Consortium for Equitable Change in Hispanic Serving Institutions OER): Scroll down to see completed and in-progress textbooks created by CA community college faculty.
ROTEL (Remixing Open Textbooks through an Equity Lens): Upcoming OER textbooks created or adapted with an equity and inclusion lens.
California Open Online Library for Education (COOL4Ed): The three State of California Higher Education Systems are working together to provide a directory to quality free and open eTextbooks that everyone and anyone can use for teaching and learning.
COOL4Ed Faculty Showcase: This area of the website lists specific disciplines and highlights faculty who've adopted OER, including what material they're using and how they incorporate it into their class(es).
GALILEO open Learning Materials: This repository is run by the University System of Georgia and includes open textbooks and ancillary materials.
OpenEd CUNY: A curated digital library of open educational resources used throughout the City University of New York
OpenALG: Open Affordable Learning Georgia is a collection of OER textbooks, lab manuals and ancillary materials in a variety of disciplines.
Open Textbooks from Iowa State University: A growing collection of unique OER that cover some hard-to-find disciplines like plant science and interior design.
Milne Open Textbooks: Formerly called Open SUNY Textbooks, This is an open access textbook publishing initiative established by State University of New York libraries. All textbooks are faculty-authored and peer-reviewed.
SUNY OER Ready-to-Adopt Courses: OER content for specific disciplines and courses that can be adopted as-is or remixed to fit your needs.
Skills Commons: The US Department of Labor’s Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT) program has created a free and open online library called Skills Commons containing free and open learning materials and program support materials for job-driven workforce development.
Pressbooks Directory: Pressbooks is a publishing platform for OER.
BC Open Collection: A collection of open textbooks aligned with the top 40 highest-enrolled subject areas in the province [British Columbia].
Open Oregon Educational Resources: Promotes textbook affordability for community college and university students, and facilitates widespread adoption of open, low-cost, high-quality materials.
Mason OER Metafinder (MOM):Simultaneously search OER repositories.
Canvas Commons: Found in your Canvas campus account, these courses are openly licensed and often contain textbooks, learning activities, and assessment tools.
OASIS: User-friendly OER search tool developed by SUNY Geneseo's Milne Library.
PhET Simulations: Physics Education Technology simulations to help students engage in science and mathematics.
Wisc-Online: A digital library of web-based learning objects for technical education and other disciplines.
HHMI BioInteractive: A large hub of videos and activities related to biology. All are free to use and many have a CC license, which allows for modification.
Unsplash: High-resolution photographs. NOTE: Photos that indicate "iStock" or "Unsplash+" are not free to use; you should avoid those.
Wikimedia Commons: Huge image library. Scroll down to browse image categories in the “Content” box or use the search bar in upper-right.
Pexels: A large selection of high-quality free stock photos and royalty-free images.
Flickr: After you search, use the “Any license” drop-down menu in upper-left corner to filter to various open licenses.
Art Institute of Chicago: Images in the public domain.
Cleveland Museum of Art: Images in the public domain.
The Met Open Access Collection: Images in the public domain.
Smithsonian Open Access: Images in the public domain.
Library of Congress “Free to Use and Reuse” image sets.
iNaturalist: Amateur and professional scientists from around the world collect and share observations from nature. Licensing is different for each image and some all all rights reserved so pay attention to the license. Read the Educator's Guide for more details.
Anatomy Tool: Use and create images. Licensing varies by resource.
Bioicons: Graphics, diagrams, and more for a variety of scientific topics.
ASCCC OERI Flickr collection: Images for biological sciences.
Berkshire Bioscience Image Library: Images of plant and animal tissues. This is an ongoing project.
Biology Micrographs from the College of Marin.
Medical Gallery of Blausen Medical on Wikiversity
All Go: A collection of stock photos featuring plus-size office workers.
Centre for Aging Better: Positive and realistic images of older people.
Disabled and Here Collection: Photo collection featuring disabled Black, Indigenous, people of color.
Disability:IN: Disability-inclusive stock photography.
Dollar Street: Photographs of families, their homes, and how they live around the world.
Gender Spectrum Collection: Stock photos of trans and non-binary people.
Human Development Institute: Images featuring people with disabilities.
Images of Empowerment: Images of women’s lives and work.
Nappy: High-resolution photos of black and brown people.
Open Peeps: Hand-drawn, mix-and-match illustration library.
PICNOI: Stock photo library of diverse multi-racial images.
Queer in Tech Collection: Photoset of queer and gender-nonconforming (GNC) people in technology.
Noun project: Icons and photos on a variety of topics
Redefining Women: Diverse icons of women, hosted by the Noun Project
Flat Icon: Icons representing a variety of topics
Converting your course to Zero Textbook Costs doesn’t mean everything has to be an Open Educational Resource (OER). The library has a wealth of material to help you meet learning goals while reducing material costs for your students.
Don’t rely on the library’s search engine (OneSearch). Instead, begin your search for resources in specific databases that will be most useful in your discipline.
Library Databases Page: This page is organized with general databases at the top (databases that cover virtually all disciplines) and then goes into databases that are geared toward specific disciplines and subject matter. After the “General” section, databases are organized by category in alphabetical order. Here’s a sampling of what you’ll find on this page:
CQ Researcher: Great for current events and providing topic ideas for research papers, discussions, and other projects.
Films on Demand: Nearly all disciplines are covered in this streaming media database. You can link to or embed an entire video or small portions. Films on Demand is integrated into Canvas to allow you to embed content directly into a page. See instructions in the library’s Films on Demand User Guide.
EBSCO Ebook Collection: This is a vast collection of ebooks, both fiction and nonfiction. You can do a keyword search or browse by topics.
Proquest Ebook Central: Scholarly and popular ebooks from many subject areas.
Very Short Introductions from Oxford University Press: This collection of concise ebooks provide an overview of complex topics covering many disciplines.
Gale Ebooks: The online reference collection with general and subject-specific encyclopedias, primary source documents, and background information.
US Major Dailies: Access to the country’s top five newspapers: NY Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and Chicago Tribune.
Sacramento Bee: Database access allows you to read the Sacramento Bee without hitting a paywall or being bombarded by online advertisements.
Wiley Online Library: Scholarly journals in the social sciences, life sciences, computer science, business, communication, and other fields.
SAGE Journals: Scholarly journals in the health sciences, social sciences, humanities, engineering, and life sciences.
Not all YouTube videos are OER, but they are freely available online and can easily be embedded into Canvas. This list includes channels that are well-known for producing high-quality, captioned videos. You should always check to make sure captions are true and not auto-generated.
More from PBS: Nature, Space Time, Eons, Above the Noise, Deep Look, Great Performances
TED Talks: Always a favorite. You can use their YouTube channel or the Ted Talks website to embed videos.
TED-Ed: Library of talks and original animated videos with lessons, for educators.
Khan Academy: It's not just for Math! They have resources on many subjects, including Economics, Art History, History, PoliSci, Finance, Entrepreneurship, etc.
Crash Course: Very well-known channel providing educational and highly engaging videos on many subjects.
3Blue1Brown: Math with a visuals-first approach.
Mathispower4u and Mathispower4u Español: Math tutorials from basic arithmetic through calculus III and beyond.
MathemAddicts: Math videos created by CRC math instructor, Roy Simpson
The Art Assignment: Art and art history through the lens of things happening today.
MinuteEarth: Science videos
Braincraft: Psychology videos
Wireless Philosophy: Learn about Philosophy with professors from Yale, Stanford, Oxford, MIT, and more. 130+ animated videos.
The School of Writing, Literature, and Film at Oregon State University: Videos on grammar, fiction, poetry, literary terms, and more. The most popular English Department channel on YouTube!
Audiovisual Lexicon for Media Analysis: Library of 3-minute streaming videos featuring cinema and media studies faculty from across the world explaining a specific critical media studies term and illustrating how it can be applied to analyze selected film, television, and media examples.
Netflix Full Features: Netflix has put some of its films and series out for free on its YouTube channel, with captions!
Many links shared on this page were taken from the course "Zero Textbook Cost Pathways: OER & Equity (2019)" by Aloha Sargent and James Glapa-Grossklag, for California Community Colleges’ Zero Textbook Cost Degree program, licensed under CC BY 4.0
