Guides: Open Educational Resources (OERs): Find

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Finding OERs

David Wiley on finding OERs using Google Advanced Search

OER sources

MetaFinders submit your query to several search engines and return a summary of the results.

Mason OER Metafinder
Conducts a real-time, simultaneous search across 21 different sources of open educational materials.
Merlot
Provides access to curated online learning materials and content creation tools. Designed primarily for staff and students of higher education.
Oasis
Searches open content from many sources. You can filter your search by subject and resource type.
Open Research Library
Includes all open access book content worldwide on one platform for user-friendly discovery.

lumen learning - course catalogue and virtual peer communities focused on strengthening effective teaching practices and supporting student success
MIT OpenCourseWare - materials from over 2,500 MIT courses
SUNY OER Services - ready-to-adopt course catalogue of over 120 courses
SkillsCommons Complete Courses Search - lists OER initiatives offering complete courses

BCcampus OpenEd
Tertiary education, open access, textbooks offered in a variety of digital formats. Search by subject and download them to your computer.
DOAB: Directory of Open Access Books
High quality, open access, peer-reviewed books.
OER Commons
Open educational resources representing a variety of disciplines.
Open Textbook Library
Free, peer-reviewed, and openly-licensed textbooks. Includes a list of Open Textbooks by Subject.
OpenStax
Tertiary education textbooks developed and peer-reviewed by educators. Licensed CC BY.
Pressbooks Directory
Large collection with variety of filters
Adoption finder
Use this spreadsheet to find open textbooks in use across a range of subjects
Open Book Publishers
Humanities and Social Sciences titles from a not-for-profit, open access, publisher in the UK.

Pixabay:Videos
Thousands of stock video clips and footage.
Open Culture
Free cultural and educational media such as audiobooks, ebooks, textbooks, online courses, and movies.
American Silent Feature Film Database
The first comprehensive survey of the survival of American silent feature films.

Unsplash
Photos licensed for re-use under Creative Commons Zero (No Rights Reserved).
Pixabay
Images released free of copyright under Creative Commons Zero (No Rights Reserved).
Superfamous Studios
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license, meaning you can use the photos as long as credit is given and you don't change them.
Noun project
Icons and photos, free to re-use as long as credit is given.
Google image search
In Settings | Advanced search setting | select usage rights "free to use, share or modify, even commercially".

Free Music Archive
Original music from independent artists free to download under Creative Commons licences.
Freesound
Collaborative database of audio snippets, samples, recordings, bleeps, and more, released under the Creative Commons Sampling Plus License.
Partners in Rhyme: Sound Effects
Collection of free sound effects and web links to other online collections.

Email Discussion Lists

These two are particularly useful. Post a query and you can expect to get excellent & quick suggestions back from academics in a specific discipline and OER librarians:

Guide to searching

The OER Starter Kit Workbook by Abbey Elder Stacy Katz (2020)
The book has five sections: Getting Started, Copyright, Finding OER, Teaching with OER, and Creating OER. Each chapter is accompanied with learning objectives and most chapters feature interactive elements and opportunities for readers to engage with the text. Although some chapters contain more advanced content, the Starter kit is primarily intended for users who are entirely new to Open Education. You can also view this content on PressBooks.