How does one find OA/OER Course Materials for one’s courses?
MYTH: Finding OA/OER is difficult, more difficult than with commercial texts and other course materials.
MYTH: There is no OER in my discipline.
It is true that OA/OER publishers have limited marketing staff, but it takes very little effort to discover course materials for one’s classes. There are OER/OA materials in virtually every discipline; if you teach an introductory course, there is very likely to be OER/OA.
Publishers’ Catalogs vs Independent Catalogs vs OA/OER Search Engines
The way instructors discover traditional textbooks is by hearing from sales reps, receiving marketing emails and looking through publishers’ catalogs.
Instructors can find OER/OA materials by reviewing OER publisher catalogs (e.g. http://OpenStax.org ) or independent catalogs (https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/), and by using OER/OA Search Engines. In practice, the boundaries between these are blurry. The following lists are examples that will work for most people. The lists are not exhaustive.
Independent Catalogs:
- https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/
- https://open.bccampus.ca/
- https://www.merlot.org/merlot/
- https://libretexts.org/
Publishers’ Catalogs:
OER/OA Search Engines:
- Openly Available Sources Integrated Search (OASIS) http://oasis.geneseo.edu
- Merlot Smart Search: https://www.merlot.org/merlot/
- The Mason OER Metafinder https://oer.gmu.edu/?page_id=967#mom
For help in finding OER course materials, you may contact Paul Boger UMW’s OER & Scholarly Communications Librarian (pboger@umw.edu).
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Image “Bookstore” courtesy of Rachel Voorhees via flickr.com.