E-Textbooks: Tools

Developing your own and editing existing OER

One of the greatest strengths in OER is the possibility of editing e-resources to better suit your needs.  A vast majority of open e-textbooks have creative commons licenses that allow you to alter, add, subject, re-create, and manage content.  However, you must follow the terms of the creative commons license the original was filed.

Most of the open textbooks are available as PDFs.  Consequently, if you have access to Adobe Acrobat Complete you can edit the textbook.

A few e-textbooks require special software to edit, such as Pressbooks. 

The Rebus Community is a non-profit organization committed towards developing open textbooks and related content.  Their focus appears to be helping authors create content and share it.  Their web presence is a simple forum menu with many links, videos, and how-to manuals.

Frazar Library is experimenting with editing textbooks.  We hope to have more experience and demonstrations in the future.

Discipline specific resources

LibreTexts is a new (2018-2019) resource developed by UC-Davis to promote OER in fields not abundant in OER resources such as business, health, and nursing.

PhET Interactive Solutions is a vast collection of OER resources for math and science disciplines.  Activities, lectures, resources, and videos are available for  K-12 and university age groups.

Open Social Work Education is developed by faculty at various universities in the Commonwealth of Virginia.  The goal is to promote OER in social work; but the collection does include other areas..