Repositories and Search Tools [Reference]
Learning Objectives
By the end of this chapter, you will be able to:
- Identify four search tools for finding open educational resources.
- Identify at least two search tools for finding openly licensed media.
This chapter is an adaptation of the chapter, “Repositories and Search Tools” from the OER Starter Kit by Abbey Elder and is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 International license.
In the last chapter, we reviewed some strategies for finding OER. Below, a set of available repositories, search tools, and resources are listed to help you find the right OER for you.
We would encourage you to bookmark the page for Finding OER, a resource on the UVA Library OER Guide.
While you are certainly welcome to begin your search, we will take time during our next learning community session to walk through the search process and give you hands-on practice time.
Best Bets for Starting Your Search
When starting your search for OER, it’s best to begin in a place with a wide variety of options. The websites listed below each have a different focus, but they are good places to start if you aren’t sure what to look for.
- The Open Textbook Library is a great resource for finding open textbooks. If you want a textbook and nothing more, this is the place to start. The Open Textbook Library (OTL) provides an easy-to-use interface for locating and evaluating OER. Along with peer-reviewed textbooks, OTL provides reviews from faculty who have adopted their texts for courses.
- The Pressbooks Directory includes all books (textbooks, handbooks, and other text-based media) published on Pressbooks, a popular OER-authoring tool. UVA has its own instance of Pressbooks where you are welcome to request an account and author your own OER.
- OpenStax is one of the most popular OER repositories in use and provides textbooks for colleges as well as high school AP courses.
- BCCampus Open Textbooks collects resources created, reviewed, or adopted by instructors at British Columbia universities. Materials can be filtered by Accessibility as well as whether they have been adopted by BCCampus courses, include ancillary materials, or have been reviewed by faculty.
- Curated lists of OER, like the Iowa State University Library Guide to OER, can be useful for exploring a selection of open content in your subject area. The UVA Library guide to OER’s Finding OER page also includes listings of popular texts within specific disciplines (scroll mid-way on the page).
Federated Search Tools
Federated searching allows you to search multiple data sources at once. Information may be retrieved from different content locations with a single query and search interface. Federated search tools are sometimes referred to as metafinders.
VIVA’s Faculty Textbook Portal
Hosted by the Virtual Library of Virginia (VIVA), it contains VIVA shared e-books, ebooks for purchase, and OER from the following collections: BC Open Textbook Project; OAPEN Library; Open SUNY Textbooks; Open Textbook Library; and VIVA Open Collaboration course content. Note, this portal is slated to sunset on July 31 due to lack of EBSCO platform support.
SUNY’s Openly Available Sources Integrated Search (OASIS)
OASIS is a search tool that aims to make the discovery of open content easier by searching multiple sources for OER and other open content at once. OASIS currently searches for open content from 79 different sources and contains approximately 330,000 records.
The Mason OER Metafinder (MOM) links to a wide array of open content, including open access books and articles, documents in the public domain, and OER. Because of its large breadth of resources, we recommend that you start your MOM search with only a selection of the “OER-specific sites” checked, rather than all the materials it can include.
MERLOT is a project that was started in 1997 by the California State University system. The repository includes thousands of resources contributed by members, including original content and links to resources found through other platforms.
Institutional Collections
Institutional repositories (IRs) aren’t just for sharing copies of research articles and student theses. They can also be used to store and share OER. Although not every college shares OER through their institutional repository, the colleges below do share collections of OER specific to their institution:
- Libra (University of Virginia)
Recipients of the Affordability & Equity Grant offered by the Library are required to deposit within Libra. - Galileo Open Learning Materials (Georgia higher ed institutions)
- OpenMichigan (University of Michigan)
- MIT OpenCourseWare (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Subject-specific Repositories
Some open educational resources are shared through subject-specific repositories. A few notable examples of this type, including open publishers that specialize in one discipline, are listed below:
- Chem Collective: Chemistry
- Learn Chem E: Chemical Engineering
- Noba Project Psychology Modules: Psychology
- Center for Open Educational Resources and Language Learning (COERLL): Languages
- Open Geography Education: Geography
- Engineering Technology Simulations: Engineering, Physics
- PhET Simulations: Physics, Physical science, Geology, Chemistry
- SkillsCommons: Career & Technical Education
- ACRL Sandbox: Information literacy, library science
- Green Tea Press Textbooks: Computer Science, Programming (Bayes, Python, MATLAB, Java, DSP)
OER by Course
Some colleges choose to share information about which OER their instructors assign in courses. These lists can give you a good idea of what other instructors in your discipline have adopted and (if they have provided a review), what they think of their adopted resource.
- COOL4ED Faculty Showcase (California universities and colleges)
- Open Oregon Educational Resources (Oregon universities and colleges)
Open Content (not explicitly OER)
Not all open content is made to be used in the classroom, but that doesn’t mean you can’t integrate them into your course. Open access book chapters and openly-licensed media can be great additions to your course.
Open Access Publishers and Repositories
- Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ): Open Access journal articles
- Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB): Open Access books
- Project Gutenberg: Public domain books and documents
- PubMed: Open access journal articles
- Public Library of Science (PLoS): Open access journal publisher
- Open Book Publishers: Open access book publisher
CC-licensed Media
- CC Search: A federated search tool for finding content available under a CC license
- Digital Public Library of America: Public domain images, videos, recordings, and texts
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art: High-quality open images from the Met
- Pexels: Public domain and CC-licensed photographs and stock images
- Unsplash: Public domain and CC-licensed photographs and stock images
- Wikimedia Commons: Public domain and CC-licensed images and figures
- Google Image Search: Images. Use the Tools/Usage rights button to filter by license
- Youtube: Videos. Use the Advanced Search/CC license option to see open content
- Free Music Archive: Public domain and CC-licensed music and sound bytes
Remember, a great bookmark to have on hand is the UVA Library Finding OER page.
It is understandable that you may not be ready to completely convert an existing textbook or adopt a full version of an open text. Many people who are new to OER start by seeking out ancillary content–and that’s where we are headed in the next chapter.