UIC Open Textbooks Guide
A university-curated launch point for open textbook and OER searches.
UIC Library’s guide gathers major open textbook libraries, OER repositories, and cross-repository search tools in one place. It is designed to help instructors and students locate freely usable course materials, with links to related guidance on evaluating, adopting, or creating open textbooks.
Why it stands out
- Combines textbook-specific sources with broader OER repositories instead of focusing on only one format.
- Highlights quality signals such as faculty reviews, peer review, and institutional publishing initiatives where available.
- Includes federated OER search options for searching across many collections from a single starting point.
- Maintained as part of an academic library guide, giving it a practical course-adoption orientation rather than a general web directory feel.
Good to know
- The page is a curated guide, not a single searchable database of all listed resources.
- Access, licensing details, and content coverage depend on the external repositories it links to.
- Some linked repositories include materials that may not all use Creative Commons or fully open licenses, so users still need to verify terms.
- The guidance is framed for UIC users, though most linked resources are useful beyond the university.
Under the radar: If a subject-specific textbook collection is too narrow, use the OASIS or Mason OER Metafinder links near the bottom of the page to search across many OER sources at once.
Photos
Faculty and instructional designers can quickly compare reputable places to find open textbooks for course adoption. Search for no-cost textbooks in common college subject areas. Look beyond textbooks for syllabi, assignments, quizzes, simulations, and other OER. Start an OER search with federated tools such as OASIS or Mason OER Metafinder. Find UIC library guidance related to evaluating and using open educational materials.
Annotated links to open textbook collections, broader OER repositories, OER training webinars, and centralized search tools. The guide also connects to companion pages on evaluating open textbooks, adoption or creation workflows, fair use, and UIC’s OER incentive program.
Alternative listings
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Similar sites elsewhere
- Open Textbook Library — open.umn.edu/opentextbooks
- OER Commons — oercommons.org
- OpenStax — openstax.org
- LibreTexts — libretexts.org
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