LibGuides: Open Educational Resources: Open Books

What are Open Books?

Open books are books that are freely and legally available online. There are some differences between the types of open books available which are explained below. The following sections indicate some of the search engines and repositories available to search for different types of open books.

Open Access Books
Open access books are published through open access and are freely available online.

Open Textbooks
Open textbooks are books published with open licenses and can be distributed, adapted and revised by the end user as well as being freely available online.

Books in the public domain
Books in the public domain are books that are out of copyright. Many of these have been digitized and are freely accessible online.

Finding Open Books

Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB)
A discovery service that indexes and provides access to academic open access books and book publishers.
FINDit
FINDit, the USW search engine, includes some open access resources in its searches. To search for open books, enter your subject in the search box and use the Everything search option. Select Open Access from the filters on the left-hand side of the results lists and then Books to see open books.
InTechOpen
An academic open access book publisher offering over 5,000 books and book chapters, predominantly in science subjects.
Knowledge Unlatched
Knowledge Unlatched is platform for academic open access publications, including open books.
Open Access Publishing Continental Platform
An open access platform from the University of Cape Town providing a place for African researchers to provide open access to their research, including open textbooks and monographs.
Open Access Publishing in European Networks (OAPEN)
The OAPEN platform indexes and provides access to thousands of open access academic books.
Open Book Publishers
An independent, not-for-profit UK open access publisher run by scholars. A leading open access publisher in the social sciences and humanities, they publish monographs and textbooks in all subject areas.
Pressbooks Directory
An index to open books published using the Pressbooks platform.

Finding Open Textbooks

B.C. Open Collection
The University of British Columbia hosts a growing collection of accessible, faculty reviewed open textbooks across a range of subject areas. The site contains additional supporting materials as well as help guides and documentation on using and adapting open textbooks. 
Milne Open Textbooks
Milne Open textbooks, formerly known as Open SUNY Textbooks, is run by the State University of New York libraries. This site offers a repository of open textbooks authored and peer-reviewed by State University of New York Faculty and staff.
OER Open Textbooks
Part of the OER commons website, this hub offers a curated collection of open textbooks in a range of subjects.
Open Stax
OpenStax is a collaboration between Rice University, philanthropic organisations and educational resource companies that provides peer-reviewed, university level open textbooks in a wide range of subject areas.
Open Textbook Library
The Open Textbook Library is based at the University of Minnesota and contains over 800 open textbooks in a range of subjects.

Finding Digitized Books in the Public Domain

Google
Google books is Google’s book search engine. It can be used to find books that are freely available online as well as digitised print books in the public domain.
Haithi Trust
Haithi Trust is a digital preservation repository which includes online copies of millions of books in the public domain.
Internet Archive 
The Internet Archive is a not-for-profit library of digital content including an extensive collection of books in the public domain.
Project Gutenberg
Project Guttenberg contains over 60,000 free eBooks which can be read online or downloaded.  It specialises in older works and contains many classics of world literature.
Public Domain books
A list of the best sites containing free ebooks in the public domain.