LibGuides: Open Educational Resources: Open Textbooks and Books

Open Book Libraries

Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB)
Large collection of open access books, made available by academic publishers such as Springer and Palgrave Macmillan. "Academic publishers are invited to provide metadata of their Open Access books to DOAB.”
HathiTrust
The HathiTrust is a partnership of research institutions and libraries. The HathiTrust Digital Library seeks to gather the vast collections of partner institutions in digital format. Some collections include the Documentary History of the Constitution of the United States of America, 1786-1870 and the Thomas Jefferson Papers.
Internet Archive Digital Library
The Internet Archive provides searchable access for researchers and the general public to digital historical collections. Includes both texts and videos.
OAPEN Library
Based in Netherlands, OAPEN provides freely accessible academic books. The initial project focused on developing open content in the Humanities and Social Sciences. However, OAPEN continues to broaden its content to AI, bio-ethics, and beyond.
Project Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg’s mission is to encourage the creation and distribution of ebooks. Includes over 46,000 ebooks that are in the public domain, because their copyrights have expired.
Routledge & CRC Press Open Access Books
From the site: "Taylor & Francis Open Access Books are published across all subject areas, our strengths are in Society & Social Sciences and Humanities.We have also built collections in subject specific areas and collections for universities and funders who have a large amount of book content to open access."

American Memory
Most content at this site is now available from LOC.gov/collections. A few collections remain at this site. Provides free, open access to written and spoken words, sound recordings, images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience. Materials are taken from the Library of Congress and other institutions.
Chronicling America
This is a searchable database of historic U.S. newspapers It is produced by the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP), a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress. The site includes more than 800 newspapers from 25 states.
Library of Congress: Digital Collections
Sample online collections include American History & Culture, Historic Newspapers, and the Veterans History Project.
Making of America (MOA)
The initial phase of this project began in 1995 and focused on developing a collaborative effort between the University of Michigan and Cornell University. Using primary materials at the Michigan and Cornell libraries, the two institutions developed a digital library of American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction. Future plans are to expand MOA to include other major research libraries. Includes over 10,000 books and 50,000 articles.
Govinfo
Govinfo provides free online access to official publications from all branches of the Federal Government. Since December 2018, this is the Government Printing Office's replacement for the Federal Digital System (FDsys).

Ancient Greek & Roman Studies

Perseus Digital Library
Offers various collections. The major collection is of Greek and Roman materials covering the history, literature, and culture of the ancient world. It has texts in the original Greek and Latin and some English translations.

Economics

RePEc
A database of working papers, journal articles, books, books chapters and software components, in Economics and related subjects.

Sciences

ArXiv.org
Provides open access to more than 1,037,900 e-prints in Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Quantitative Biology, Quantitative Finance and Statistics.
Chemistry LibreTexts
From the site: "This Living Library is a principal hub of the LibreTexts project, which is a multi-institutional collaborative venture to develop the next generation of open-access texts to improve postsecondary education at all levels of higher learning. The LibreTexts approach is highly collaborative where an Open Access textbook environment is under constant revision by students, faculty, and outside experts to supplant conventional paper-based books."

Theses

Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
Directory of links to worldwide databases collecting electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs).

Open Textbooks

B.C. Open Textbook Collection
From the site: "The B.C. Open Textbook Collection is home to a growing selection of open textbooks for a variety of subjects and specialties. Discover open textbooks that have been reviewed by faculty, meet our accessibility requirements, and/or include ancillary materials (quizzes, test banks, slides, videos, etc.)."
National Academies Press
The National Academies Press (NAP) was created by the National Academy of Sciences. It publishes over 200 books a year on subjects such as science, engineering, and medicine. NAP has more than 5,000 titles in PDF format. PDFs can be downloaded for free by the chapter or the entire book.
OER Commons: Textbooks
Open access educational resources and textbooks. Covers primary school through graduate and adult learners. Use and remix.
Open Textbook Library
Open textbooks offer complete textbooks licensed so teachers and students can freely use, adapt, and distribute the material. All textbooks are can be downloaded for no cost.
OpenStax
OpenStax publishes high-quality, peer-reviewed, openly licensed textbooks that are absolutely free to access online and low cost to print.
Writing Spaces: Essay Clusters
Focused on resources for the writing classroom, Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing offers essays, activities and assignments for free use.