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Open Education

Resources for finding and using open educational resources (OER) and other open education topics for students.

Open textbooks provide free access to high-quality educational materials across various subjects. Unlike other online materials, open textbooks are often peer-reviewed and curated by experts, ensuring that the content is accurate, reliable, and up-to-date. The open license allows you to use, adapt, and distribute them without legal or cost barriers. Open textbooks can be structured, comprehensive resources that support learning and academic success.

 

 

Additional sites

  • Assayer - Large catalogue of openly licensed textbooks. Also is a good place to find free books about math, science and computers.
  • AU Press - Athabasca University Press - free pdf and low cost print version of mainly Canadian books.
  • Chemistry Library - Open chemistry textbooks, assignments, experiments and more.
  • HathiTrust Digital Library - HathiTrust is a partnership of major research institutions and libraries and their "aim to build a comprehensive archive of published literature from around the world. It provides long-term preservation and access services for public domain and in copyright content from a variety of sources, including Google, the Internet Archive, Microsoft, and in-house partner institution initiatives."
  • National Science Digital Library - Access to teaching and learning materials in the STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). Search by level, resource type, and subject.
  • OApen - contains freely accessible academic books mainly in the area of humanities and social sciences.
  • Open Research Library - more than 20,000 Open Access books on many topics, through Knowledge Unlatched.
  • Wikibooks - Wikimedia's community for creating and sharing educational textbooks.

Open Textbooks in the KPU Library Collection

The KPU library collection includes a variety of open textbooks which you can find by searching for the keywords "open textbook".

Printing OER Textbooks

While open textbooks are available for free online, there are many reasons why you might want a physical copy. Some OERs offer the option to purchase a print copy where you only pay for the cost of printing with no additional mark-up or profit margin (allowing for the purchase of OERs with NonCommercial licenses).
 

  • Instructors who have published Pressbooks at KPU can set them up in the Bookstore so that you can order print copies on demand. This option will show up as an option when you are shopping for course materials.
     
  • Some of the books from the BC Open Collection site can be purchased in print format. If this is available, you will see a prompt for Order Hardcopy among your access options at the top of the page. While the charge will be cost recovery, there is also a shipping charge which will vary depending on the book. You can avoid delivery fees by choosing to pick it up from the SFU Spirit Shop and Bookstore.

 

Remember that your book will be available online at no cost while you wait for your print copy.