Guides: How Do I Find ~ Open Educational Resources: Home

About this Guide

The purpose of this guide is to promote the awareness of Open Educational Resources and make it easier for faculty and students to find freely accessible content to use in their course development, teaching and research.

Many of our other guides have links to Open Educational Resources, and should also be consulted.

What are Open Educational Resources?

Open Educational Resources (OERs) are any type of educational materials that are in the public domain or introduced with an open license. The nature of these open materials means that anyone can legally and freely copy, use, adapt and re-share them.

More Info:
SPARC Open Educational Resources
How To Support Open Educational Resources

Open Educational Resources During the COVID-19 Health Crisis

Many publishers have made resources available to faculty, staff, and students during the current health crisis and shelter in place orders.

We have listed several sources that may be of interest to you:

Open Educational Resources

Images

Flickr
Search for Creative Commons-licensed images.
Open Culture
Free cultural and educational media (movies, ebooks, textbooks, courses, audio, etc.).
The Public Domain Review
A curated collection of images, books, audio and film determined to be in the public domain, somewhere in the world. Care should be taken to research restrictions placed on the use of any content before re-using, particularly for commercial purposes.
Shared Shelf Commons
An open access database of image collections shared by institutional users of Shared Shelf. Search and browse collections with tools to zoom, print, export, and share images. Institutions that subscribe to Shared Shelf can choose to share their images with the world via the Commons.
Wikimedia Commons
A vast collection of images, sound and video to which anyone can contribute. License terms are specified for each item.

Art Images

Art Images for College Teaching
A royalty-free image exchange resource for the educational community.
Artstor Images for Academic Publishing (IAP)
IAP provides free print-quality images for use in scholarly publications. Scholars at institutions that subscribe to Artstor can access these images through the Artstor Digital Library. Simply add IAP to your search criteria; the eligible results will feature the IAP icon beneath the thumbnail image. Other scholars may request free access to IAP by emailing iap@artstor.org.
Getty Museum
More than 10,000 images from the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Getty Research Institute available through the Open Content Program. These include paintings, drawings, manuscripts, photographs, antiquities, sculpture, decorative arts, artists' sketchbooks, watercolors, rare prints from the 16th through the 18th century, and 19th-century architectural drawings of cultural landmarks.
Google Art Project
Explore the thousands of artworks in the collections of major art museums and galleries from around the world. Viewers can create their own collections and do side-by-side examinations of works.
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Over 375,000 images of artworks in The Met's collection that the Museum believes to be in the public domain, or those to which the Museum waives any copyright it might have. The Met's Open Access policy allows for these images to be used for any purpose, including commercial and noncommercial use, free of charge and without requiring permission from the Museum.
To identify these images, look for the Creative Commons/Public Domain Zero (0) icon directly below the image.
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Open Access Policy
National Gallery of Art
More than 45,000 open access digital images up to 3000 pixels each are available free of charge for download and use. NGA Images is designed to facilitate learning, enrichment, enjoyment, and exploration.
Rijksmuseum
Over 200,000 works of art. To download an image, you are prompted to indicate your intended use: personal, professional, or commercial. Each has different terms and conditions.

Prints & Photographs

British Library Flickr Photostream
Over one million images taken from the pages of 17th, 18th and 19th century books, available for anyone to use, remix and repurpose.
Getty Images
Images can be freely published on a website or blog or in social media, as long as the photo is not used for commercial purposes.
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1. Search for an image.
2. Place pointer over an image and click the (< / >) icon.
3. Copy and paste the code into your website or blog.
How to embed Getty Images
Library of Congress - Prints & Photographs
Includes photographs, fine and popular prints and drawings, posters, and architectural and engineering drawings. While international in scope, the collections are particularly rich in materials produced in, or documenting the history of, the United States and the lives, interests and achievements of the American people.
New York Public Library Digital Collections
Over 800,000 images digitized from the The New York Public Library's vast collections, including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints, photographs and more.
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More than 180,000 of the items in the Digital Collections are in the public domain. No permission required. No restrictions on use. Read more about the public domain collections and tools designed for remixing and reuse.

OER Logo by Markus Büsges (leomaria design) für Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

Maps

David Rumsey Historical Map Collection
More than 32,000 maps and images focusing on rare 18th and 19th century North and South America.
Library of Congress - Maps
The Library of Congress has custody of the world's largest and most comprehensive cartographic collection, some of which have been converted to digital form.
New York Public Library Map Collections
More than 15,000 digital items from the library's map collection.
Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection
More than 11,000 maps scanned by the University of Texas Libraries. Most are in the public domain.
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Please credit the University of Texas Libraries as the source of the scanned images.

OER Logo by Markus Büsges (leomaria design) für Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

Audio

Internet Archive - Audio
Recordings ranging from alternative news programming, to Grateful Dead concerts, to old time radio shows, to book and poetry readings, to original music uploaded by our users. Many of these audios and MP3s are available for free download.
Library of Congress - Sound Recordings
Includes African-American and folk music, the earliest sound recordings, important historical audio, slave narratives, and much more.
Open Culture
Free cultural and educational media (movies, ebooks, textbooks, courses, audio, etc.).
Open Music Library
Curated by a community of music scholars, students, teachers and librarians, the Open Music Library brings together peer-reviewed journal articles, books and music scores from the world’s digital collections.
The Public Domain Review
A curated collection of images, books, audio and film determined to be in the public domain, somewhere in the world. Care should be taken to research restrictions placed on the use of any content before re-using, particularly for commercial purposes.
SoundCloud
A social sound platform where anyone can create sounds and share them everywhere.
Wikimedia Commons
A vast collection of images, sound and video to which anyone can contribute. License terms are specified for each item.

OER Logo by Markus Büsges (leomaria design) für Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

Video

AP Archives
1.7 million global news and entertainment video stories, which date back to 1895.
British Movietone
Newsreel archive spanning the period 1895 to 1986.
British Pathé
Newsreel and documentary archive of over 85,000 historical films.
Internet Archive - Moving Image
Digital movies which range from classic full-length films, to daily alternative news broadcasts, to cartoons and concerts. Many of these videos are available for free download.
Library of Congress - Motion Pictures
Includes historical footage of important events and scenes of American life and work, television advertisements, early animation, and much more.
Open Culture
Free cultural and educational media (movies, ebooks, textbooks, courses, audio, etc.).
The Public Domain Review
A curated collection of images, books, audio and film determined to be in the public domain, somewhere in the world. Care should be taken to research restrictions placed on the use of any content before re-using, particularly for commercial purposes.
TED Talks
Short, powerful talks (18 minutes or less) on a variety of topics, from science to business to social and global issues.
Wikimedia Commons
A vast collection of images, sound and video to which anyone can contribute. License terms are specified for each item.

OER Logo by Markus Büsges (leomaria design) für Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

Books

Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB)
The primary aim of DOAB is to increase discoverability of Open Access books.
Hathi Trust
Provides cataloging and online access for millions of books and journals digitized by Google, the Internet Archive, Microsoft, and major research libraries.
Internet Archive's Digital Book Collection
The Internet Archive and Open Library offers over 6,000,000 fully accessible public domain eBooks. This includes a special modern collection of over 500,000 eBooks for users with print disabilities, and a very interesting curated, modern collection for the world at large.
Open Culture
Free cultural and educational media (movies, ebooks, textbooks, courses, audio, etc.).
Open Humanities Press
An online open-access publishing collective.
The Public Domain Review
A curated collection of images, books, audio and film determined to be in the public domain, somewhere in the world. Care should be taken to research restrictions placed on the use of any content before re-using, particularly for commercial purposes.

OER Logo by Markus Büsges (leomaria design) für Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

Manuscripts

Digital Scriptorium
An image database of medieval and renaissance manuscripts that unites scattered resources from many institutions into an international tool for teaching and scholarly research.
New York Public Library Manuscripts and Archives
Over 29,000 linear feet of manuscripts and archives in over 5,500 collections. The strengths of the collection are the papers and records of individuals, families, and organizations, primarily from the New York region.

OER Logo by Markus Büsges (leomaria design) für Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

Journals

Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
An online directory that indexes and provides access to quality open access, peer-reviewed journals.
Hathi Trust
Provides cataloging and online access for millions of books and journals digitized by Google, the Internet Archive, Microsoft, and major research libraries.
JURN: The Directory of Scholarly eJournals in the Arts & Humanities
Journals listed are either free, or offer significant free content.
Open Humanities Press
An online open-access publishing collective.

OER Logo by Markus Büsges (leomaria design) für Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

Data

Data.gov
U.S. government open data, tools, and resources to conduct research, develop web and mobile applications, design data visualizations, and more.
OpenICPSR
A place for researchers to share and store research data.
UNdata
Search across over 14 UN statistical databases.
World Bank Open Data
Free and open access to data about development in countries around the globe.

OER Logo by Markus Büsges (leomaria design) für Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

Courseware

MERLOT
A free and open peer reviewed collection of online teaching and learning materials. One of the largest repositories of ILMs (i.e., instructional learning materials).
Open Course Library
A collection of high quality, free-to-use courses that you can download and use for teaching.

OER Logo by Markus Büsges (leomaria design) für Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

Textbooks

College Open Textbooks Collaborative
A collection of twenty-nine educational non-profit and for-profit organizations, affiliated with more than 200 colleges, focused on driving awareness and adoptions of open textbooks. The site includes peer reviews of open textbooks, and provides training and mentoring for authors seeking to adopt or create open textbooks.
Open Culture
Free cultural and educational media (movies, ebooks, textbooks, courses, audio, etc.).
Open Textbook Library
A tool to help instructors find affordable, quality textbook solutions. All textbooks in this library are complete and openly licensed.
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Open Textbook Network Partners:

CalPoly State University - San Luis Obispo
Cleveland State University
Minnesota State Colleges & Universities (2015)
Oregon State University
Purdue University
University of Minnesota
University of Northwestern Saint Paul
University of Oklahoma
Virginia Tech (Feb. 2015)
and many others are in discussion...
OpenStax College
Free textbooks that meet scope and sequence requirements for most courses. These are peer-reviewed texts written by professional content developers.

OER Logo by Markus Büsges (leomaria design) für Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

Open Libraries

British Library Flickr Photostream
Over one million images taken from the pages of 17th, 18th and 19th century books, available for anyone to use, remix and repurpose.
Digital Public Library of America
The DPLA brings together the riches of America’s libraries, archives, and museums, and makes them freely available to the world through a platform that enables new and transformative uses of our digitized cultural heritage.
Gallica
In French. Digital Library project of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, providing full-text access to texts, images and audio files from the Middle Ages through the 19th century.
Hathi Trust
Provides cataloging and online access for millions of books and journals digitized by Google, the Internet Archive, Microsoft, and major research libraries.
Library of Congress Digital Collections
View maps & photographs; read letters, diaries & newspapers; hear personal accounts of events; listen to sound recordings & watch historic films.
New York Public Library Digital Collections
Over 800,000 images digitized from the The New York Public Library's vast collections, including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints, photographs and more.
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More than 180,000 of the items in the Digital Collections are in the public domain. No permission required. No restrictions on use. Read more about the public domain collections and tools designed for remixing and reuse.
Open Music Library
Curated by a community of music scholars, students, teachers and librarians, the Open Music Library brings together peer-reviewed journal articles, books and music scores from the world’s digital collections.
World Digital Library
An online collection of nsome 11,000 items -- books, photographs, maps, recordings, and other primary source materials from 121 institutions.

OER Logo by Markus Büsges (leomaria design) für Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

Search Engines

Creative Commons Search
Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that enables the sharing and use of creativity and knowledge through free legal tools. The search page provides a portal to image and media sites with content that is licensed for public use.
OAIster
A catalog of millions of records representing open access digital resources that was built by harvesting from open access collections worldwide. Search for texts, audio, videos, images, data sets, more.

OER Logo by Markus Büsges (leomaria design) für Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

Open Scholarship at Hamilton

Hamilton Digital Commons
Digital Humanities Initiative
Hamilton College Digital Collection
Open Access

HamiltonX

Hamilton College has joined the online learning platform edX as a contributing member through a unique partnership with its liberal arts neighbor, Colgate University.
Learn more about the HamiltonX MOOCs.

edX
Take great online courses from the world's best universities.
OER Commons
In addition to being a content hub, OER Commons also provides training, tools and support services to the open education community.
Open Culture
Free cultural and educational media (movies, ebooks, textbooks, courses, audio, etc.).
Open Education Consortium
A worldwide community of hundreds of higher education institutions and associated organizations committed to advancing open education and its impact on global education.

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