Research Guides: Open Education: Open Textbook Collections

Open Textbook Collections

The Open Textbook movement focuses on the creation and use of books which are openly licensed -- in short, free and editable. These textbooks are also openly licensed with a Creative Commons meaning that dependent on the license, they may be legally displayed/uploaded/hosted, distributed, modified, etc. without fee, permission, or conducting a fair use analysis. (See Creative Commons for more information on the various CC open licenses.)

Many of the collections will have links to the same books, but each collection has items unique to their collection.

Additional books that are not technically "open" are also listed. They may be "free online" but subject to copyright, or they may be low cost options.

See also the "Find OER (by discipline)" tab.

Open Textbooks (free and openly licensed)

Open Textbook Library (Univ of MN)
The Open Textbook Library is a collection of over 300 freely available electronic textbooks licensed under one of six Creative Commons licenses. Some books include faculty peer reviews. All can be read online or are downloadable for offline reading.
Open Stax College (Rice University)
A growing collection of professional quality, peer-reviewed, openly licensed, editable intro-level textbooks. All textbooks are licensed with a Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY) and are freely available in PDF, HTML, ePub, and customizable via Connexions (cnx.org). iBook versions are $4.99. Hardcover print versions range from $30-50 depending on the size of the book. Most OpenStax books include ancillary material. Many have companion online homework systems available at a discounted rate.

Guide to Finding Open Textbooks (maintained by BC OER Librarians)

OpenStax College textbooks were featured in the Fall 2014 University Libraries' open textbook display: https://blogs.lt.vt.edu/openvt/2014/09/03/open-textbooks-available-for-review

Current OpenStax College books include: Find ancillary materials for each book at https://openstax.org/subjects or ancillaries shared by other faculty members at: https://www.oercommons.org/hubs/OpenStax

Canvas shells for ALL the OpenStax OER textbooks have been created by the CCC Online Ed Initiative (OEI). The shells are WCAUG 2.0 compliant and designed based upon the OEI design rubric. The shells have Creative Commons Attribution licenses on them so that you can modify them. To find the shells for ALL OpenStax texts, along with an "empty" shells that you can use for any other subject or text, go into Canvas Commons. Search "CCC OEI OER".

British Columbia Campus Open Campus Textbook List
Openly licensed textbooks created or listed by BCCampus, a consortium of post-secondary educational institutions in British Columbia.
OpenSUNY Textbooks
A growing collection of openly licensed textbooks in a wide variety of topics.
MERLOT
MERLOT contains links to freely available online textbooks from a variety of sources. MERLOT II is a project of the California State University System.
- Search instructions: (Filter "material type" by "open textbook").
OER Commons
OER Commons indexes a wide variety of openly licensed educational materials. Licenses vary by item.
Search instructions: (Under "material type" select "textbook" or for a curated collection go to: https://www.oercommons.org/hubs/open-textbooks )
Saylor Academy Bookshelf
Each of the books in the Saylor Academy bookshelf is freely available for download, online reading, and sharing under one of various open licenses.
Directory of Open Access Books
Openly accessible (and many openly licensed) electronic books. Nearly 2,500 books as of January 2015. Includes search and browse finding features. Many times from international publishers and strong focus on humanities and social sciences.
Connexions
Freely available, open-licensed educational materials in a wide variety of fields (electrical engineering, music, psychology etc.). Rice University.
College Open Textbooks
Openly licensed textbooks for a variety of subjects. Focus is on first two years of college.
Free textbooks (from Open Culture)
The Global Text Project
publishes open content electronic textbooks that are freely available. They focus on content development and Web distribution, and work with relevant authorities to facilitate dissemination by other means when bandwidth is unavailable or inadequate. The goal is to make textbooks globally available to the many who cannot afford them.
Find free online course materials related to a book (search by ISBN)

Books in the Public Domain

HathiTrust
The HathiTrust Digital Library contains over seven million volumes and over one billion pages of scanned books and other materials. About 20 percent of all content is in the public domain (and accessible to you). You can also browse several public collections. Content is available in several image formats, text, and PDF. 1200s-present.

Project Gutenberg
Nearly 48,000 digitized books as of 2015. All in the public domain (in general, published before 1923). Available in epub, kindle, PDF or to be read online. Over 50 languages. Great source for classics and historical works.
Guide to Finding Interesting Works in the Public Domain Online

Library-Subscribed Textbooks

VT Summon Search for (print and electronic) Textbooks
Many electronic (and print) textbooks are indexed by the University Library's Summon database. These include eBooks the library has purchased as well as openly licensed textbooks the library has included in the Summon index. This search is for eTextbooks only.
- If you are off campus, we recommend that you use OFF CAMPUS SIGN IN to increase your number of results.
- If you are looking for a particular subject, add "AND ___" to the search box
- If you are looking for a particular title and cannot find it, confirm that the spelling is correct and search (electronic and print) titles from the library homepage at: http://lib.vt.edu
- The library does not own, subscribe to, or have access to all available textbooks. We index many but do not currently have a way to identify, index, and retrieve all available openly licensed textbooks.
- Faculty, contact your subject liaison to determine if your commercial textbook is available electronically with a multi-user license.
Textbooks on Library Reserve
Many faculty members request that library-owned print textbooks be put on Reserve, or request that portions of books be placed on Reserve in accordance with Fair Use.
- This link directs faculty/GTAs to information regarding placing items on Reserve https://lib.vt.edu/collections/reserves.html