1 Getting Started with OER: A librarian’s guide to must see destinations

Transcript:

This short video will introduce 3 places to start searching for Open Educational Resources on any topic.

We start our journey on the library homepage, where you will find a link to our guide on Open Educational Resources or OER.

This ever expanding guide collects all our favourite places to find different kinds of OERs, whether you are looking for textbooks, images, video, museum collections, or want to know how to use Google for your search.

I always recommend that people start their search in OASIS, Openly Available Sources Integrated Search, a metasearch tool that currently searches 113 different sources.

OASIS includes a wide range of materials, from textbooks to interactive simulations.

You can input your subject area into the search box.

Or you can use the OER by Subject option, which provides collections of OER by subject area.

If we select math for example, we will see many different kinds of resources listed.

Another great place to visit is the Open Textbook Library by the Open Textbook Network. While their database is included in OASIS, they also list the newly published books online, often with reviews, as well as upcoming books so that you know what’s coming down the pipeline. You can sign up for their newsletter if you want to be notified of any new books.

You might also have a need to find openly licensed images. On the guide I’ve collected my favourite places to find these. Foremost is Openverse, formerly known as Creative Commons Search. A metasearch tool that includes 300 million images, and will soon also include audio and video.