1 II D. Finding OER Resources and Materials
Where to begin
The availability of OER materials is growing increasingly robust, allowing for multiple ways to find appropriate resources. This guide lists multiple resources from most generalized search engines to specific types of materials or topics. The entries of each subsection are listed in alphabetical order.
Search Tips
There are many reasons why OER might be difficult to locate, from content being locked in silos to a lack of consistency in the metadata used across repositories . In this chapter, we outline a few places to start your search for OER and some tips for you to use during that process. The searching process may be handled by you, staff you supervise, or by faculty you have trained on the searching process. These tips can guide you through the search process, regardless of the individual executing the search.
Planning Your Search
Start your search by planning ahead based on what you already know about the instructor and course you are supporting. Take note of the following:
- Subjects covered: weekly topics covered in the course, and which topics are of particular interest to the instructor you are searching for or with
- Formats: the material types or formats that your instructor prefers to teach with, and any formats the instructor is interested in exploring in more depth
- Priorities: the most important criteria that the OER you find will need to meet, according to the instructor you are working with (e.g., the instructor might need a resource that is ready to adopt, available in a specific format, or that includes a particular focus)
- Minimum inclusion criteria: the minimum criteria a resource should meet to count as a successful find, based on your conversations with this course’s instructor
Much of this information may already be documented if you have had an OER consultation with your instructor, at which you should have received a copy of your instructor’s syllabus.
Use the Right Tool for Your Needs
If you aren’t sure where to start, use a metafinder that pulls in content from multiple repositories, such as SUNY’s Openly Available Sources Integrated Search (OASIS). If you are looking for open textbooks, try the Open Textbook Library or the Pressbooks Directory. If you are looking for videos, start with YouTube or Vimeo, which you can filter to search specifically for Creative Commons-licensed videos.
Start Broad, then Branch out with Subject-Specific Terms
Use basic keywords rather than highly specific terms (e.g., “psychology” or “abnormal psychology” rather than “obsessive-compulsive disorders”). As you keep looking, use alternate search terms specific to the discipline you are looking for. You can identify terms by looking at the course syllabus or schedule provided by the instructor you are supporting. Weekly topic lists contain singular topics, which it may be easier to find individual readings for.
Save Useful Search Terms
Approach your search like you would approach research for an ongoing project. If a particular tool or search term provided you with good results, save those terms in your note-taking tool of choice so you can track back your results and try again later. New OER are being produced constantly, so you will want to check back for additional resources being shared online.
Review as You Go
Check the OER you find for basic accessibility markers, and make note of any particularly well-crafted content you come across for later. Basics such as specific file types and accessible PDFs can be a good benchmark for initial evaluations. For items with clear and present issues, like PDFs lacking alt text on images, make note of those and how they could be overcome or adapted for future use.
Repositories & Referatories & Collections
George Mason University’s cross-repository OER search tool.
MERLOT (Multimedia Education Resource for Learning and Online Teaching)
MERLOT (Multimedia Education Resource for Learning and Online Teaching) is an online repository and international consortium of institutions of higher education, industry partners, professional organizations and individuals. MERLOT identifies, peer reviews, organizes, and makes available existing online learning resources in a range of academic disciplines for use by higher education faculty and students.
Openly Available Sources Integrated Search (OASIS) is a discovery tool that searches open content from over 110 different sources.
A leader in supporting the production of open textbooks and other OER through financial support from the Canadian government and the Hewlett Foundation. Also provides a useful search tool for hundreds of open textbooks and links to available ancillary resources, faculty reviews, and editable files.
Initiated at the University of California, Davis, and is supported by a grant from the Department of Education Open Textbook Pilot Project. Its “Explore the Libraries” tab features OER in a range of subjects plus workforce materials. Ancillary materials vary by subject but include laboratory experiments, case studies, simulations, demonstrations and techniques, and interactive fossils. Features an OER remixer to support the adaptation of OER texts.
Contains teaching and learning materials that you may freely use and reuse at no cost. Unlike fixed, copyrighted resources, OER have been authored or created by an individual or organization that chooses to retain few, if any, ownership rights. In some cases, that means you can download a resource and share it with colleagues and students. In other cases, you may be able to download a resource, edit it in some way, and then re-post it as a remixed work. How do you know your options? OER often have a Creative Commons or GNU license to let you know how the material may be used, reused, adapted, and shared.
Nonprofit organization affiliated with Rice University that produces openly licensed textbooks for college and Advanced Placement (AP) courses. OpenStax textbooks are among the most commonly used open textbooks across the country and may offer free ancillary materials for instructors.
A growing catalog of free, peer-reviewed, and openly-licensed textbooks supported by the Center for Open Education and the Open Education Network at the University of Minnesota. All textbooks are original, freely licensed, available as a portable file, and used by or affiliated with an academic institution.
Open Courseware & Open Access Articles
Courseware
Open access courses in a variety of subjects maintained by the Lumen Learning platform
Contains over 2,400 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) open courses including syllabi, videos, lectures, assignments, and exams. OpenCourseWare also includes resources to support educators exploring open education.
National Science Digital Library
Open resources from the National Science Foundation on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education, from preschool to adult education.
Home of free learning resources developed by the Open University (British research university). Offerings range from short courses to interactive games to audiovisual resources.
Showcase of top-notch 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.
Articles
BASE (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine)
BASE is a search engine for academic web resources operated by Bielefeld University Library. Not all contents are open access– about 60% of resources are freely accessible to anyone. BASE is a registered Open Archives Initiative service provider, and its metadata index can thus be integrated into local database infrastructure.
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)
Not-for-profit service that runs an aggregator of open access research papers collected from repositories and journals. Other services offered include an API for accessing research paper metadata and browser extensions to support the discovery and recommendation of articles.
Collection of free, full-text scholarly articles from global universities and colleges that is curated by university librarians. Users can browse subjects through a multicolored discipline wheel or follow specific authors or publications to receive monthly updates on activity in their field.
DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals)
Independent, British non-profit index of open access journals from around the world. All of DOAJ’s data is freely available to users.
Open Scholarly Resources & Books
Resources
DPLA (Digital Public Library of America)
Gathering of image, text, video and sound collections sourced from libraries and archives across the U.S. Also home to the Palace Bookshelf, a collection of thousands of open access eBooks.
OpenDOAR (Directory of Open Access Repositories)
OpenDOAR is a curated directory of academic open access repositories in which you can search for repositories or within repository contents. Originated as a collaboration between the University of Nottingham and Lund University and managed in part by Jisc, a British not-for-profit IT service provider.
A union catalog from WorldCat of records representing open access resources worldwide that was built using the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH). Updates quarterly and features multimedia and theses alongside standard books and articles.
OATD (Open Access These and Dissertation)
Resource for finding open access graduate theses and dissertations published around the world. Metadata (information about the theses) comes from over 1100 colleges, universities, and research institutions.
ROAD – Directory of Open Access Scholarly Resources
ISSN-managed resource that covers different types of online scholarly resources: journals, conferences proceedings, academic repositories, monographic series, and scholarly blogs.
Books
DOAB (Directory of Open Access Books)
Discovery tool that provides access to peer-reviewed scholarly books and helps find trustworthy open access publishers.
Leading science, technology and medicine open access book publisher. Features an index of their books and book series, which are available to read and download.
Noba is a free, online platform that provides psychological science textbooks and educational materials licensed under the Creative Commons CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 International License. Users may reuse, redistribute, and remix the content to suit their needs.
Offers ebooks from respected presses and top scholarly publishers, including Brill, Cornell University Press, De Gruyter, and University of California Press. Also includes open access journals, Artstor’s public collections, and select research reports.
Independent open access scholarly press that publishes textbooks, monographs, anthologies, and more. Authors are charged nothing to publish and retain full rights to their work.
Simulations & Virtual Labs
Open Educational Resources: Simulations and Virtual Labs
A wide variety of virtual STEM resources curated by the Arthur Lakes Library at the Colorado School of Mines to support courses that employ OER.
University of Colorado Boulder project that creates free simulations for physics, earth science, chemistry, biology, and math classes. All featured simulations are individually tested and open source. Simulations are coded in HTML5 and can be embedded in other media, downloaded, or run online.
Disciplinary Repositories
Open Textbooks for Engineering
The Engineering Library Division of the American Society for Engineering Education has compiled this list of resources dedicated to engineering OER. The list features general engineering OER plus OER subdivided by engineering discipline.
Disciplinary Repositories | Open Access Directory
List of open access preprint and postprint depositories alphabetized by field, maintained by the Open Access Directory and hosted by Simmons College. Unless otherwise noted, listed depositories accept contributions regardless of the author’s institutional affiliation.
Collects, indexes and distributes research in agriculture and applied economics. Sponsored by the University of Minnesota and an international advisory board, its contents range from journal articles to dissertations to conference presentations.
Curated by university librarians and their supporting institutions, it includes a collection of free, full-text scholarly articles from around the world. Users can browse academic disciplines and their subfields through a color wheel interface.
Open archive of biomedical and life sciences literature from the U.S. National Institutes of Health’s National Library of Medicine.
SSRN (Social Science Research Network)
SSRN is an open access research platform intended for sharing early stage research and communicating findings. Despite its name, SSRN features research from outside the social sciences in the physical sciences and humanities.
Open Data
Dryad Data (UNM has an institutional subscription to the Dryad database)
Explanation of what open data is and why it is valuable. Link at the end of the page for “US Federal Data Sharing Resource” contains data sharing requirements for American federal agencies including NIH, NSF, and USDA.
re3data (Registry of Research Data Repositories)
The Registry of Research Data Repositories, funded by the German Research Foundation, is one of the largest registry of data repositories available on the web. Covers a range of disciplines.
Open Data Repositories | Open Access Directories
List of open data repositories organized by subject, maintained by the Open Access Directory, and hosted by Simmons College. Note that some repositories may be open in only certain respects.
The United States government’s official collection of hundreds of thousands of open datasets, ranging from the county to federal level. Datasets can be sorted by source organization.
Images
General Collections
DPLA (Digital Public Library of America)
Gathering of image, text, video and sound collections sourced from libraries and archives across the U.S. Allows searching for images only and limiting results to specific usage licenses.
Digital images uploaded by Archive users, which range from maps to astronomical imagery to photographs of artwork. Many of these images are available for free download.
Successor to Creative Commons Search that searches open APIs and aggregates results from public image and audio repositories into a single catalogue.
Free stock photo and video website. Images on the site can be used without attribution and for commercial purposes.
Website dedicated to sharing royalty-free images, stock photos, GIFs, et cetera. The Pixabay license permits sharing images sourced from the website without attribution and for commercial purposes but prohibits the sale of posted images without meaningful alterations by the vendor.
Media file repository that shares public domain and freely licensed educational content. It is the common repository for media employed by the Wikimedia Foundation and its projects.
Art, Museum, and Archival Images
Assortment of cultural institutions that have agreed to share and post images on Flickr that have “no known copyright restrictions”.
Public domain images within the Getty collection are freely available for download through their Open Content Program. Note that most images from the present century and several images from the 20th century are still copyrighted and therefore cannot be downloaded. Users can filter search results for “Open Content”.
Library of Congress Digitized Images
Historical graphics and photographs available for free use and download.
National Gallery of Art Open Access
Images in the permanent collection of the National Gallery that are believed to be within the public domain are available for direct download. Conducting an advanced search allows filtering images that are available for download.
All public domain images in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection are free to use, share, and remix without restriction (Creative Commons Zero license).
NYPL (New York Public Library) Digital Collections
“Living database” of digitized items from the library’s collections. Note that there are some copyright restrictions on particular objects.
Digital images from the Smithsonian Institute’s collection that have been licensed Creative Commons Zero (CC0), making them free to download, transform, and share.
Government Agency Images
The media library of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is publicly accessible and copyright free.
NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Organization) Photo Library
Images contributed by NOAA staff that reflect the agency’s work monitoring the condition of the United States’ seas and skies. All images are within the public domain.
USDA (U.S. Department of Agriculture) Image Gallery
Digital photographs produced by the USDA Research Service Office of Communications, with agriculture related subjects.
Diverse Image Collections
Creative Commons zero (CC0) licensed images of adults over 50 years old that avoid stereotypes of the elderly
Free-to-use and downloadable stock photos of disabled people of color of various body types, sexual orientations, and gender identities.
Gender Spectrum Collection: Stock Photos Beyond the Binary
Stock photo library of images of transgender and non-binary people in everyday settings, absent stereotypes and clichés.
Stock photos of people (primarily women) from the Global South at home and at work. Supported by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.
High-resolution stock photos of Black and Brown people, all licensed Creative Commons Zero (CC0).
Canva gallery of free-to-use images of women typically underrepresented in stock photo collections.
Other Image Search Tools
In order to search for open images via Google Images, first select “Tools”, then “Usage Rights”. You can then choose to limit the results to images with “Creative Commons licenses” or “commercial & other licenses”.
Mix-and-match vector graphics to create simple illustrations of people. Graphics are licensed Creative Commons Zero (CC0).
Library of hand-drawn mix & match vector illustrations to create avatars and characters. All content is licensed Creative Commons Zero (CC0).
TinEye is a reverse image search engine and thus determines where an image came from, how it is being used, if modified versions of the image exist, or if there is a higher resolution version. To use, you can upload a file from your computer or give a URL to a graphic file on the web.
Medical Image Collections
Free online database of medical images, teaching cases, and clinical topics from the National Library of Medicine. Images can be searched by disease category, organ system, and patient profile. Includes CEs and quizzes.
OPENi Biomedical Image Search Engine
National Library of Medicine service that locates images (including charts, graphs, clinical images, etc.) found in PubMed Central open access articles and selected biomedical image collections. Search with keywords or with image file (select the camera icon in the search bar).
Licenses and Attributions
The material in Search Tips was adapted from The OER Starter Kit for Program Managers Copyright © 2022 by Abbey K. Elder, which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.
The material summarizing the various resources was adapted from Open Educational Resources (OER) UND Libraries which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.