Resource of the Week #188: Two Sources of Openly Accessible Textbooks

Hello again. Recently I took part in a survey on knowledge and attitudes about open access publishing. One question mentioned 2 sources of openly accessible textbooks. After looking at these sources, I decided to feature them as a Resource of the Week.

One source is the Open Textbook Library. This source contains openly accessible textbooks in many subject areas, including humanities and language, natural and physical sciences, and social sciences. One can browse the library by subject area or search it using specific terms.

Among books in the Open Textbook Library, 3 that might interest many AuthorAID members are Collaborative Statistics, Introductory Statistics, and OpenIntro Statistics. Another that might be widely relevant is The Information Literacy User’s Guide.

The other source that was mentioned is called OpenStax College. It currently has fewer books than the Open Textbook Library. However, it does include textbooks in several major areas of natural and physical science and social science.

At present, both sources feature largely introductory textbooks. In addition to being resources for teaching, these books can aid scholars starting to explore new subject areas. They also can help those of us having broad interests to update our knowledge.

I’m glad to have learned from the survey.

Until next post—

Barbara