Repositories are locations online where educators can go to find OERs created by other educators to potentially use in their own teaching. Equally, they are useful places to put your own work if you think it could be useful for other educators.
There are quite a few repositories out there, as you can see in this Padlet which lists just some of them. Not all repositories are created equal, however, and quite a few in the latter list don't have a lot in them or aren't quite as user friendly as others.
Below you'll find a short list of several of the main discovery points of OER. Some are repositories of many different types of OER. A couple are open textbook-specific.
OER Commons includes all kinds of educational resources from complete university courses to open textbooks, interactive, web-based activities and lesson plans. Ability to search by subject and education level. Try looking for something in your subject area -- do you see anything of potential interest?
Pressbooks directory includes many textbooks created using Pressbooks and so will be relatively straightforward to adapt into something new. Note of caution: pay attention to licenses, as not everything here qualifies as 'open' and a number here are in fact all rights reserved. Use the license filter to get at the open stuff.
Open textbooks are textbooks that have been funded, published, and licensed to be freely used, adapted, and distributed. The books in the Open Textbook Library have been reviewed by faculty from a variety of colleges and universities to assess their quality.
Based out of Rice University, openstax are publishers of high-quality, peer-reviewed, openly licensed third-level textbooks.
MERLOT also includes educational materials in many different formats, with ability to filter in the Advanced Material Search according to Subject, Audience (i.e. Third-Level or not), Material Quality (i.e. peer reviewed or not) and by license.
Funded by the Canadian province of British Columbia, BCcampus OpenEd focuses on open textbooks, including books not only created in BC but also pulled in from other institutions.
The Library proactively supports and enhances the learning, teaching, and research activities of the University. The Library acts as a catalyst for your success as University of Galway’s hub for scholarly information discovery, sharing, and publication.
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