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:

•     http://openstax.org
•     http://lumenlearning.com
•     https://www.saylor.org/

 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).

[ next question: How Does One Determine the Quality of OER/OA? ]

Image “Bookstore” courtesy of Rachel Voorhees via flickr.com.