Research Guides: Alternative Textbooks (Open Educational Resources): Find Other Edu Materials

Select Non-Traditional Educational Materials

Certain materials can be adapted for educational purposes without invoking copyright concerns. Some sources to find these materials are listed below.

Catalog of U.S. Government Publications
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U.S. federal government documents are in the public domain and can be freely reused and adapted for educational and research purposes.
American Memory
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As a digital record of American history and creativity, American Memory provides access to a variety of materials that document the American experience.

Internet Scout Archives
The Internet Scout has identified online resources for various disciplines that may be useful for teaching and learning purposes.
IssueLab
This site provides access to thousands of publications from social sector organizations around the world.
Free Cases
The Case Center has compiled this list of free cases from international sources, with emphasis on business and health sectors. Registration is required for access.
Open Case Studies
Based at the University of British Columbia, this initiative provides a growing collection of case studies for educational use. The case studies are openly licensed and cover a variety of topics.
American Archive of Public Broadcasting
This resource makes available contents produced by public radio and television over the years.
Netflix Educational Documentaries
In response to educators' requests, Netflix provides free access to some documentaries through this YouTube channel. Information about accompanying resources is available on this page.
Digital Public Library of America (DPLA)
The Digital Public Library of America aggregates collections from American libraries, archives, and museums and makes them freely available to the world.
Internet Archive
"Internet Archive is a non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, websites, and more."
Europeana
This is a multi-lingual online collection of millions of items from European museums, libraries, archives.
Google Arts & Culture
Visitors can view images and explore collections from cultural heritage institutions around the world.
Smithsonian Learning Lab
This site provides educators with millions of digital resources from the Smithsonian Institution to enhance learning experience.
Library of Congress: Free to Use and Reuse Sets
The sets of images displayed on this page come from the Library of Congress's digital collections and are free to use and reuse.
Library of Congress: Government Resources for Science Images and Video
This portal helps people find images and videos for scientific and technical disciplines such as Agriculture, Biology, Geology, and Health Sciences.
MedPix
MedPix is a free online medical image database from the National Library of Medicine with thousands of indexed and curated images and teaching cases.
Open-i
Open-i is an "open access biomedical image search engine" managed by the National Library of Medicine that covers charts, graphs, illustrations, and clinical images.
Creative Commons Search
This search portal helps people find openly licensed images, music, and audiovisual content that can be freely reused as long as the specified licensing conditions are observed.
Sketchfab Downloadable
A variety of 3D models are available for free download after registration.

Research Data as Educational Materials

Some instructors encourage students to engage in scholarly studies using research data that are freely available online. The following resources are created to enable search for research datasets.

DataCite Metadata Search
This tool from DataCite facilitates searches for online research datasets.
Harvard DataVerse
An initiative based at Harvard University, this resource helps researchers in any fields to find (and also share) research data.
DryadLab
DryadLab offers openly licensed research data for scientific inquiries designed by university and high school instructors.
Data.gov
The U.S. federal government provides access to datasets on a variety of subject areas.
DataMed
This is a search engine for biomedical data.
DataONE Search
This site enables a search across various data repositories for Earth and environmental sciences.
openICPSR
This open digital repository focuses on social and behavioral science research data.
Zenodo
This is a catch-all repository for open data collected by researchers funded by the European Commission.
Google Dataset Search
This tool enables people to find datasets from thousands of online repositories.
Research Data Discovery Service
This online service aims to enable the discovery of British research data.
Federated Research Data Repository (FRDR)
This initiative helps improve the discovery of Canadian research data.
European Union Open Data Portal
Data from European Union institutions and agencies is freely available here for innovative reuse and augmentation of its economic potential.
B2FIND
B2FIND enables users to search metadata harvested from many community repositories.
CESSDA Data Catalog
CESSDA (Consortium of European Social Science Data Archives) connects social science data archives across Europe in order to facilitate research collaboration.
Research Data Australia
This catalog helps people find and access research data from Australian government agencies as well as research and cultural organizations.
Scholexplorer
This tool enables researchers to find datasets related to research deliverables such as published literature and known datasets.
figshare
This digital repository holds a variety of research outputs.
Linkage Library
This is an interdisciplinary repository for researchers to share data and codes.
Elsevier DataSearch
This tool enables search for research data across different platforms.
Registry of Research Data Repositories (re3data.org)
re3data.org helps researchers identify suitable repositories for archiving and sharing research data.