Your Librarian
OER Grants
UND OER grants are available to help instructors create or adapt OERs for use in their classes.
We currently have funding available for OER adoption and creation. The Open Educational Resources (OER) Implementation Grant application is now closed. We will place a notice here when the next grant is open for applications, expected to be early 2025.
To learn more about the UND grant, please see our FAQs on the Open Educational Resources Grant webpage.
Explore the tabs at the left to locate OER textbooks and course materials in your specific discipline.
What is OER?
OER are Open Educational Resources: free, open-source course materials and textbooks created by academic institutions, professors, and teachers.
OER are created with the intention that they be used by other instructors and institutions, and most are peer-reviewed. OER are usually licensed under creative commons licenses, which allow specific different kinds of uses, allowing others to alter completely, alter partially, or simply republish OERs.
One of the aims of OER-creation is to save students money by replacing costly textbooks with free course materials, and so the majority of OER textbooks are created for undergraduate-level general education courses which typically have the most student enrollment. However, new OER are created every day.
Please see the comprehensive Chester Fritz Open Educational Resources Libguide for OERs in more disciplines and to learn more about the concepts behind open access and open educational resources.
Finding OER
Many databases of open educational resources are maintained by non-profits and educational institutions:
- Merlot - OER Database - Health Sciences Collectionmaintained by California State University Long Beach
- OER Commonsavailable in multiple formats
licensed under multiple creative commons licenses
OER Commons is a database of open educational resources created in 2007 by the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education. Resources available in the Health, Medicine, and Nursing Collection include full courses, lectures, videos, articles, etc. - Medicine and Health Sciences Commons - Digital Commons Networkavailable in multiple formats
licensed under multiple creative commons licenses
"The Digital Commons Network brings together free, full-text scholarly articles from hundreds of universities and colleges worldwide. Curated by university librarians and their supporting institutions, the Network includes a growing collection of peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, dissertations, working papers, conference proceedings, and other original scholarly work."
