Online Learning for Faculty: OER Repositories

Major OER Repositories

These sites contain a variety of OER materials - from lectures and textbooks to activities and simulations. For specific OER material types, check out the eBooks, Videos, and Labs pages.

The "Big List" from University of Pittsburgh
Start here! Research Guide with links to major OER resources - divided by subject area. Links out to textbooks, activities, and other types of resources.
Big 10 Open Books
A collaboration between the university presses and libraries of the Big Ten Academic Alliance.
MERLOT
A free and open online community of learning objects and resources designed primarily for faculty, staff and students of higher education.
OER Commons
Contains variety of material types like: Activity/Lab, Assessment, Case Study, Data Set, Diagram/Illustration, Full Course, Assignment, Interactive, Lecture, Lesson Plan, Primary Source, Reading, Simulation, Textbooks. Available for most disciplines at undergraduate and graduate educational level. Quality varies. Can search for specific term/concept or browse by subject or material type.
OER Commons Collections
Materials are organized into "collections," like "STEM textbooks," or "Education Textbooks." Some collections are better populated than others.
OER Materials from Penn State
Portal to list of links to find OER materials in five major categories: 1) Audio 2) Course Materials 3) Images 4) Textbooks and 5) Videos
University of Michigan OER Materials
4 categories: 1) Open Educational Resources -- separated by subject area and specific classes offered at UM but still contain good resources like lectures, activities, and reading materials; 2) Open Data 3) Open Publications (journals and ebooks), and 4) Open Content (images, audio, and video)

Evaluating OER

Penn State has curated a list of resources and rubrics to help librarians and faculty evaluate OER resources. Using a rubric may help a faculty member feel more comfortable using OER.

Evaluate OER from Penn State
Tools to help faculty evaluate OER materials. The resources on this page are organized from very basic to complete evaluation rubrics.
East Tennessee State OER Evaluation Research Guide
Research guide with links to evaluating OER for quality, accessibility, and copyright

Open Access Resources

Project Muse Open Access Books and Journals
Project MUSE offers open access (OA) books and journals from several distinguished university presses and scholarly societies. Through our open access hosting programs, we are able to offer publishers a platform for their OA content which ensures visibility, discoverability, and wide dissemination.
DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals)
List of Open Access Publishers
List of OA publishers from Simmons college - links to publishers with specific notations of what kind of access they offer.
Public Books Database
List of University Presses that offer open-access eBooks. NOTE - some are expanded open access due to Covid through end of April or May and some are always OA. Important for summer courses