For questions about Open Source Textbooks or any of the links found on this page, please contact David Smith, Assistant Librarian for Reference and Circulation.
General Purpose
“Bookboon’s free online textbooks for students are focused and to the point. They are all written by highly respected professors from top universities in the world and cover topics such as economics, statistics, IT, engineering and natural science.”
“The College Open Textbooks Collaborative, a collection of twenty-nine educational non-profit and for-profit organizations, affiliated with 200+ colleges, is focused on driving awareness and adoptions of open textbooks to more than 2000 community and two-year colleges.”
“Find open and free textbooks that may be suitable for….the list of Subjects provided. For descriptions of these open textbooks, see listings in MERLOT and OER Commons. Most of the textbooks on this list have Creative Commons (CC) open licenses or GNU-Free Document License. Others are U.S. government documents in the public domain (PD).”
“Check out the 149 free and open etextbooks that have been reviewed by faculty colleagues in the California Community Colleges, the California State University, and the University of California. The California OER Council developed the evaluation rubric which was used by all faculty reviewers.”
“FlatWorld shatters the traditional publishing model, delivering textbooks that meet the highest standards at a fraction of “big publisher” prices. Our streamlined, hyper-efficient process makes textbooks more accessible—putting educators and students in control.”
“We publish open content electronic textbooks that are freely available from this website. We focus on content development and Web distribution, and we will work with relevant authorities to facilitate dissemination by other means when bandwidth is unavailable or inadequate.”
“Co-founded by open-education visionary Dr. David Wiley and education-technology strategist Kim Thanos, Lumen Learning is dedicated to facilitating broad, successful adoption of OER.”
“Realizing the great potential in Open Educational Resources (OER), Lyryx aims at a sustainable business model of OER textbooks directly to create products and services. While the textbook is provided to students at no cost, a fair license fee is charged for the use of the online assessment in exchange for user support, editorial services to adapt the content, and all other needed supplementary material.”
“The Ohio Digital Bookshelf Project is a project of Ohio Textbook HQ that aims to provide quality textbook options for faculty and better learning outcomes, while also saving students money.”
Open Access Textbooks: A FIPSE Grant Project (Florida)
“The Open Access Textbooks Grant Project worked with others to create a sustainable model for Florida and other states to discover, produce, and disseminate open textbooks.”
Open SUNY Textbooks (New York)
“The mission of Open SUNY Textbooks is to provide an academic-friendly publishing model and infrastructure which supports faculty adoption, remixing, and creation of open educational resources (OER) and courses.”
“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. These books can be downloaded for no cost, or printed at low cost.”
“OpenStax is a nonprofit based at Rice University, and it’s our mission to improve student access to education. Our adaptive learning technology, designed to improve learning outcomes through personalized educational paths, are currently being piloted for K-12 and college.”
“We scour the Internet for the best quality textbooks issued under open licenses that allow for printing. Instead of finding a list of 500+ books, you’ll find a short list of books we feel are really adoptable and ready to use in a college classroom.”
The Orange Grove: Florida’s Open Educational Resource Repository
“Whether you’re in high school just starting to think about college or you’re already working and ready to earn or complete your degree… We’ve got the resources and support you need. FloridaShines works with the state’s 40 colleges and universities and other partners to help you succeed in school and beyond. “
“This directory provides an index of 2,547 books published across 98 Pressbooks networks” (as of 15 July 2021). Though the majority of books listed in the directory are open licensed not all are. Please make use of the “License” filter located along the left column.
“Since 2004, we’ve offered college students either inexpensive or premium options for their assigned textbook. Our publications are select, quality textbooks developed by professionals, and assigned by instructors.Most textbooks are available at a low price: online; online w/PDF downloads for easy printing; online with loose-leaf, and online with paperback bundles.”
“Textbook Revolution is a student-run site dedicated to increasing the use of free educational materials by teachers and professors. We want to get these materials into classrooms. On this site you’ll find links and reviews of textbooks and select educational resources.”
“Wikibooks is a collaborative book authoring website, where users from all over the world work together to write textbooks and other types of instructional books on many topics. It is a Wikimedia project, operated by the same group of people who run Wikipedia, the Wikimedia Foundation.”
Computer Science and Technology
“This site lists free online computer science, engineering and programming books, textbooks and lecture notes, all of which are legally and freely available over the Internet.”
“A collection of free textbooks written by Allen B. Downey, a professor of computer science at the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering.”
“World’s largest Science, Technology & Medicine Open Access book publisher.”
Runestone Interactive
“The Runestone Interactive tools create compelling interactive learning resources used by hundreds of Colleges, Universities, and High Schools around the world. Here is a list of the titles we know about. Contact us to add yours to the list.”
Criminal Justice
Open Educational Resources and Administration of Justice
“The curated list provided here is intended to facilitate faculty selection of an OER text in lieu of a commercial text.” from Open Educational Resources Initiative, Academic Senate for California Community Colleges
History
“…The American Yawp offers a free and online, collaboratively built, open American history textbook designed for college-level history courses. Unchecked by profit motives or business models, and free from for-profit educational organizations, The American Yawp is by scholars, for scholars.”
Language Arts
“Writing Spaces is an open textbook project for college-level writing studies courses. Each volume in the Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing series contains peer-reviewed collections of essays about writing—all composed by teachers for students—with each book available for download for free under a Creative Commons license.”
Math and Science
Open Textbook Initiative of the American Institute of Mathematics (AIM)
“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. ”
“World’s largest Science, Technology & Medicine Open Access book publisher.”
Psychology
“Noba is a free online platform that provides high-quality, flexibly structured textbooks and educational materials. These textbooks and materials are 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.”
