Search for Open Content in Repositories
You can find content with an open license or that is in the public domain in many different places. Mostly resources that you’ll want to find for your course will be grouped by format. Open textbooks have a library, open images live in image databases, open videos are on video sites, and so on.
Why isn’t there one single repository for all open educational resources, like a Google for searching open content? Because people are constantly posting things on the web with all kinds of licensing terms and it’s not possible to catalog the web. The best we can do is keep in mind a few good places to search for usable content - because you really don’t need a Google’s-worth of material for your course, you just need enough material to support students in meeting your learning objectives.
If you’re getting stuck with search, ask a librarian!
Recommended places to search for open educational resources
Textbooks
Open Textbook Library is a collection of openly licensed full textbooks. Many are also peer reviewed.
All types of open content
OER Commons is a repository for open content in many different formats - whole courses, textbooks, videos, handouts, modules, and more. On the search page you can use the drop-down menu to filter your search results by education level, and the results page has even more filters. Some of the content has been reviewed.
Images
Flickr and Google Images both have a drop-down menu in their search results to filter by creative commons license. For lots more open image repositories, visit Open Images.
Recommendations from other Oregon faculty
The Open Oregon Resources page has links to content that other Oregon community college and university instructors are using in their courses. Note: this is a mix of copyright and open content, so double-check before using. Unless you see an open license, it’s under traditional copyright.
Curated lists of OER by subject
Tacoma Community College and BC Campus maintain curated lists of open educational resources by subject and discipline.
OER search engines
OASIS and Mason OER Metafinder are two search tools that enable you to search across multiple OER collections at once.
Searching for Open Educational Resources
Watch the short video below for an introduction to searching for open educational resources.