Subject Guides: Open Educational Resources: Find Open Textbooks

The SPU Library is a member of the Open Education Network, an alliance of colleges and universities working together to promote the use of open textbooks in higher education.

What Are Open Textbooks?

Open textbooks are materials that are freely available, usually through a Creative Commons license, to download, modify, and print in various formats.

Why should faculty adopt an open textbook?

more affordable than commercially available textbooks
enable student education budgets to stretch further
faculty can readily customize open textbooks to better meet their local teaching and learning needs
provide pricing, flexibility and customization advantages that commercially available textbooks currently do not provide

Where Can I Find Open Textbooks?

Open Textbook Library
Library curated by the University of Minnesota to support development of high-quality open textbooks in various subjects. Includes open textbooks from OpenStax and other open textbook publishers.
Includes reviews of open textbooks.
BC Campus OpenEd
Open textbooks for the 40 highest enrolled first- and second-year subject areas in the British Columbia's public, post-secondary system.
Bookdown
Bookdown is an open-source R package for open book creation. Featured books on the site are primarily geared for students learning R Markdown, statistics, and Data Science.
LibreTexts
Created by a collaborative project led University of California, Davis, this open textbook platform provides texts in a variety of disciplines. Low-cost print on demand available.
OER Commons
Provides college-level open textbooks from higher education institutions around the world.
Open Washington - Washington 45
List of open textbooks and course materials that match with Washington State's general education categories.
Openstax College
Initiated by Rice University, their free textbooks are developed and peer-reviewed to ensure they meet the scope and sequence requirements of college courses.
Low-cost print copies available for purchase.
Pressbooks Directory
Over 2000 open texts published using the Pressbooks platform.
Saylor Academy
Collection of freely available open textbooks for download, online reading, and sharing.

*If you are unable to locate an open textbook for your course, try a general web search for "open textbook" and your topic, and contact your SPU librarian for additional assistance.

The SPU Library has print copies of a few open textbooks for your review, including: