Free Online Textbooks

OSU faculty regularly publish and contribute to open educational resources. This includes open textbooks as well as other open-source media and course materials.

OSU Open Textbooks
Explore a vast collection of open textbooks published by OSU faculty in collaboration with OSU's Open Educational Resources Unit (OERU).

Intro to Permaculture
A highly interactive public education project, developed at Oregon State, that teaches students worldwide how to design sustainable landscapes and ecosystems.

Spanish
Course materials for Spanish 111, 112 and 113. These learning objects were created by OSU faculty in collaboration with the OERU.

Institutions around the world host collections of OER that are freely available for faculty to use or adapt. Below are some well-known and well-vetted collections to explore.

OER Commons
This is a public digital library, created by the U.S. Department of Education, that provides educators at all grade levels with free access to a wide range of open-source materials including lesson plans, textbooks, activities, assessments, readings and more.

Online Textbook Library
Brought to you by the University of Minnesota, this open textbook library offers openly licensed college textbooks that can be freely downloaded, adapted and distributed. Most have been peer-reviewed by faculty from a variety of universities to assess quality. This tool is best for instructors looking to find full textbooks for their courses.

LibreTexts
Based out of the University of California–Davis, LibreTexts is a free online library of OER that provides access to hundreds of textbooks and courses, with a focus on the sciences and social sciences. LibreTexts has many advanced features that make it easy to remix materials for your needs.

Pressbooks Directory
Pressbooks is a user-friendly publishing platform that makes it easy for educators to create, adapt and share web-first books. The Pressbooks Directory is a searchable index of all textbooks, handbooks and other text-based media published on the platform. This includes thousands of public books published across dozens of PressbooksEDU networks. Licenses vary.

OpenStax
OpenStax is a nonprofit based out of Rice University that provides access to full textbooks, plus ancillary material, primarily for undergraduate courses. All textbooks are peer-reviewed, openly licensed and available for free. They cover a variety of subjects including biology, chemistry, physics, math, economics, humanities and social sciences.

With so many collections to explore, using a multi-repository search tool can help you explore a wider range of materials. You’re also able to compare materials from different sources. But keep in mind that the quality of search results varies more with these tools.

OASIS
OASIS is an OER search tool that provides access to full textbooks, modules, homework sets, audiovisual materials and more. Created by the State University of New York Geneseo Libraries and supported by SUNY OER Services, the tool searches open content from hundreds of different sources and contains hundreds of thousands of records. OASIS also provides a list of open textbooks that have been peer-reviewed by faculty from various colleges and universities.

Mason OER Metafinder
The Mason OER Metafinder searches across 22 different sources of OER and contains more than seven million records. It provides access to full textbooks, modules, homework sets, AV materials and more. It also provides a list of open textbooks that have been reviewed by faculty from various institutions.

The Valley Library hosts a vast collection of printed open textbooks, many produced by Oregon State faculty, on the second floor of the library. Determine if you can make the switch to open textbooks by borrowing these materials and comparing them to the current textbooks you assign.

Feeling overwhelmed? Not sure if OER will work for your course?

You can consult with Stefanie Buck, director of the Open Educational Resources Unit, for guidance on how to best find and incorporate OER into your courses.

Stefanie is available for one-on-one consultations and workshops.

Request a consultation