Search Tips

Start Broad

Searching for OER can be difficult when you’re starting from a narrow perspective. For the most results, start with a broad search focused on your discipline. Once you’ve brought together a large collection of resources, then you can begin to refine your results.

OER Search Scenario

Barbara teaches a course on abnormal psychology. She wants to find videos, readings, and case studies related to this topic for her course. Here is an example of a search strategy she can follow by starting broad:

1. Search the Open Textbook Library for “Psychology.” Peruse the Tables of Contents of listed textbooks to find chapters or sections focusing on topics covered in the course.
2. Search OASIS for “abnormal psychology.” Since OASIS searches content on multiple repositories, limiting your search a little more can be useful. These can then be sorted by format, type, or date.
3. Search YouTube for videos on specific topics related to Abnormal Psych. Since YouTube contains so many different types of content, being specific is more important on this platform.
4. As a last-ditch effort, do an Advanced Search in Google for “Abnormal Psychology” (we will discuss this more below).

By the end of these searches, Barbara has compiled the following list: Abnormal Psychology OER List [Google Docs]

Filter by Usage Rights in Google

Google is a familiar resource for many of us and helpful in finding openly licensed content. The Advanced Search feature in Google allows you to filter results by Usage rights. Filtering by usage rights will limit your results to works with certain licenses listed on the webpage, usually Creative Commons licenses. There are a few options to choose from in the Usage Rights list, but we recommend starting with “free to use or share” to retrieve the broadest set of results. Adding “OER” to your search terms can help you locate materials created for sharing if your Google search retrieves too many results.

Remember when using this method that Google trusts what users tell it about an item’s copyright status. Although a resource may be labeled CC BY or even CC 0, you should trust your instincts if you aren’t sure whether the item you are reviewing is actually under copyright. Contact a librarian or a university lawyer if you have questions.

This chapter has provided a short overview of some tools and techniques you can use to find OER. In the next chapter, we’ll provide a more comprehensive list of search tools grouped by topic and type.

Getting Help

UA Library staff can help you identify suitable OER textbooks for your courses. Contact library.publishing@ualberta.ca for more information. Keep in mind that OER can be adapted to fit your course if necessary; you don’t have to use every resource as-is.