Copyright Guide: Open Educational Resources

Below is a selection of Open Educational Resource collections.  You may find more resources by searching the Internet using the phrase "open educational resources".  Please read the terms of use for all Open Educational Resources (OER) and abide by the conditions outlined by the author. 

• BC Campus Open Textbooks
• Directory of Open Access Journals
  • Free, online, full-text journals from around the world.
• eCampus Ontario Open Library
• MERLOT - Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching
  • MERLOT is a free, open database of resources contributed by faculty, staff and students.
     
• MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW)
  • A web-based gateway to MIT course content. OCW is open and accessible to the world as a continuing MIT initiative. 
     
• OER Commons
  • Provides access to over 24,000 items for all levels of education. Many Creative Commons resources can be modified or repurposed. 

• Open Educational Resources: Internet Archive

  • Offers hundreds of free courses, video lectures, and supplemental materials from universities in the United States and China. 
     

• Open Textbook Library
  • A collection of open textbooks hosted by the Open Education Network, based at the Center for Open Education in the University of Minnesota’s College of Education and Human Development. It is a comprehensive resource for openly licensed academic textbooks. All textbooks are free, and the majority are peer reviewed. 

The availability of OER for visual art, design, craft and media and film studies is increasing all the time. Copyright restrictions can have an effect on the use of images and media resources, but some licensing does enable the use of art works in open educational and open access resources.

The following are some OER specific to visual and fine arts:

BC Campus - Design Textbooks

Obelisk: A New History of Art

Open Textbooks Library - Arts Textbooks