Open Educational Resources (OER) are an alternative to traditional textbooks that save students money and improve their educational experience. OERs are faculty-written, just like traditional textbooks, but OER texts are published under Creative Commons licenses, which allows them to be customized, shared freely online, and printed at a low cost. Feinberg librarians can provide consultations to assist with finding and adopting OER materials for your classes.
There is a catalog of OER content made especially for SUNY available at the SUNY OER Services website.
Creative Commons licenses are a customizable alternative to all rights reserved Copyright. These licenses allow you to share your creative works freely under terms that you decide. More information about Creative Commons licenses is available at the Creative Commons website.
More information and OER links are available at our OER Research Guide.
Free textbooks can obviously save you money in your classes, but they can help you even if your instructor does not assign an OER text. (Please note that you should do course readings assigned by your instructor and not try to use an alternate text to complete your coursework.) You can use OERs to:
