An open textbook is an openly-licensed textbook offered online by its author(s). The open license sets open textbooks apart from traditional textbooks by allowing users to read online, download, or print the book at no additional cost.
For a textbook to be considered open, it must be licensed in a way that grants a baseline set of rights to users that are less restrictive than its standard copyright. A license or list of permissions must be clearly stated by the author.
Excerpted from Open Access Textbooks.
From Open Educational Resources (OER) libguide by Heather Blicher
Open access texts includes e-books and textbooks. These are free for students to read online, usually also free to download, and sometimes also available in inexpensive print format. Remember that open access is not the same as OER and may have more restrictive copyright permissions. Often an open access text may have a Creative Commons license that would allow an instructor to alter the text for their course. These can be supplemented with additional OER resources.
There are multiple ways to look for open access texts. Here are some strategies:
1.Try the ISBN search if you have a text for which you want to find related free resources.
2. Try the Custom Search for Open Access Texts, which allows you to search across several large collections of open access texts.
3. Check out the resources listed for your subject area on the Open Access Texts by Subject page.
4. SDCC librarians may be able to help you find open access texts beyond those found in these collections. Ask us!
Custom Search
This tool searches across several web sites that index or publish open access texts. You'll need to skip ads at the beginning of the results list (powered by free Google Custom search).
From Open Educational Resources (OER) libguide by Heather Blicher
From Open Educational Resources (OER) libguide by Heather Blicher
