Research Guides: Open Educational Resources: General Open Collections

Getting Started with Repositories

This page is going to list general open collections that are not specific to a certain "publisher." Below are two great resources that work as repositories. They search other collections and bring your results, similar to the library's database. The second link is a link to Lindenwood's OER Commons hub, which houses a selection of books by subject.

OER Commons
The OER Commons is a single search source that pulls from multiple OER collections, including MERLOT and Connexions. It is a great first step in an OER search, but often more results can be found by searching the specific collection. Users can create collections of existing content and create their own content pages to share.
OER Commons Lindenwood Hub
View a selection of OER materials broken down into different subjects.
MERLOT
A free and open peer reviewed collection of online teaching and learning materials and faculty-developed services contributed and used by an international education community. MERLOT was opened in 1997 and is supported by the California State University System. MERLOT does not house content, but is a collection of links to other content. The materials can be ranked and many are peer-reviewed. There are discipline-specific Communities that curate and review the content.

Additional Open Education Collections

Academic Earth
Portal to open course materials and video lectures from many prominent colleges and universities.
California State University Search
Enables faculty to identify and offer quality free or low-cost course material content that can replace more costly print textbooks. Enter the ISBN of your current commercial textbook to see what free options are close to your current text.
E-International Relations
E-International Relations has international relations articles, textbooks, and daily publications of unique content aimed at academics, general interest readers, and students.
Econ Ed St. Louis and Econlowdown
The Econ Ed team at the St. Louis Fed is dedicated to providing high-quality resources and professional development to improve instruction in pre-K through college classrooms.They have free lesson plans, activities, and readings that make it easier for you to teach economics and financial literacy. They offer flexibility and real world connections to help prepare your students with 21st century skills for college and career readiness.
Folger Shakespeare
Read the full texts of Shakespeare’s plays, sonnets, and poems for free from the Folger Shakespeare Library.
HathiTrust
HathiTrust is a partnership of academic & research institutions, offering a collection of millions of titles digitized from libraries around the world.
Iris Center
The IRIS Center is a national center dedicated to improving education outcomes for all children, especially those with disabilities birth through age twenty-one, through the use of effective evidence-based practices and interventions. Iris Center contains open access to modules, case studies, activities, interviews, and video content on almost 20 different topics.
Khan Academy
A nonprofit with the mission to provide a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere.
Missouri Department of Conservation: Teacher Portal
This Teacher Portal is designed to provide the highest quality service to Missouri’s educators who are interested in teaching about Missouri’s ecology and conservation. Learn about our Discover Nature Schools curriculum guides and student materials. Explore the Missouri National Archery in the Schools Program. Review grant opportunities, free teacher workshops, and other conservation-related classroom resources and programs.
Open Knowledge Repository
The World Bank Open Knowledge Repository (OKR) is The World Bank’s official open access repository for its research outputs and knowledge products
Open Michigan
Open Michigan enables the University of Michigan community to make the products of its research, teaching, and creative work available to the world beyond campus. We are the home for all things open at the University of Michigan—including expertise and services for open educational resources, open data, and open publications.
OpenWashington
A site designed to help you understand the OER movement and find OER. They have links for finding textbooks, content, images and video, as well as stories from faculty who have adopted OER in their classrooms.
Project MUSE
Project MUSE offers open access (OA) books and journals from several distinguished university presses and scholarly societies. Through their open access hosting programs, they are able to offer publishers a platform for their OA content which ensures visibility, discoverability, and wide dissemination. The books and journals are freely available to libraries and users around the world.
Rebus Community
The Rebus Community is made up of faculty, students, and staff from schools, colleges, and universities around the world, along with regular people who believe that educational materials for every subject should be a free and open public resource.