Research Guides: Open Educational Resources: Adapt

Adapting OER for Your Course

Sometimes a resource isn't perfect for your needs. In that case you may have to Adapt the material to fit your course.

This page features some other sources of open materials that can be combined with existing OERs or used to supplement OERs with images, maps, illustrations, activities, case studies, additional readings, and more.

The big thing to keep in mind is making sure that you're complying with the Creative Commons license applied to the works you're using. Not all CC licenses allow for derivatives, remixes, translations, format changes, and some have licenses that prevent them from being combined into a new object with other mateials that have contradictory licenses. Check out the Creative Commons and Copyright page of this guide to learn more.

Remember to Attribute!

One thing all Creative Commons Licenses require is Attribution (BY). According to the Creative Commons wiki "Best Practices for Attribution" (CC-BY), a basic attribution should include:

Title - The name of the material being used
Author - The name of the creator(s) or editor(s)
Source - Provide a link or other means of locating the original material
License - Name the CC license and provide a link to the license description

Creative Commons Best Practices for Attribution

How to Modify an Open Textbook

Modifying an Open Textbook: What You Need to Know by Cheryl Cuillier, Amy Hofer, Annie Johnson, Kathleen Labadorf, Karen Lauritsen, Peter Potter, Richard Saunders, and Anita Walz
Publication Date: 2016

Modifying an Open Textbook: What You Need to Know focuses on the technological aspects of editing open textbooks found in the Open Textbook Library or elsewhere, and will help you assess the effort, expertise, and technical tools needed. In addition, this guide includes step-by-step instructions for importing and editing common open textbook file and platform types. Finally, this guide provides a basic overview of accessibility considerations and general guidance on where to find additional help.
BC Campus Adaptation Guide by Lauri M. Aesoph
Publication Date: 2016

Book Description:
The Adaptation Guide is a practical reference about how to customize — or adapt — an open textbook so that it better fits your needs in the classroom and elsewhere. This guide defines the term adaptation and discusses reasons for revising a book, why this is possible with an open textbook, and the challenges involved.

Open Materials Sources

You can also use Google to search for images with a Creative Commons License. Learn how on our Searching Google with Usage Rights page. Remember, it's up to you to make sure you have the right to reuse, remix, or otherwise share an image.

Art Images for College Teaching (AICT)
Art Images for College Teaching (AICT) began as a personal project dedicated to the principle of free exchange of image resources for and among members of the educational community.
Black Illustrations
Black illustrations is a series of digital designs of black people for your next online project. Use our designs anywhere. From your websites, web applications to mobile apps, we’ve built these designs to be used anywhere and everywhere.
British Library Commons Collection
The British Library’s collections on Flickr Commons offer access to millions of public domain images, which we encourage you to explore and re-use.
Compfight
An image search database that allows you to filter for images licensed through the Creative Commons.
Creative Commons
Search through the Creative Commons archives for images licensed to reuse.
Disabled and Here
Disabled And Here is a disability-led stock image and interview series celebrating disabled Black, Indigenous, people of color (BIPOC).
Europeana
At Europeana we work with thousands of European archives, libraries and museums to share cultural heritage for enjoyment, education and research. Search for CC licensed images using the "Can I use this?" filter to limit to Yes or Yes, with conditions.
Gender Spectrum Collection
The Gender Spectrum Collection is a stock photo library featuring images of trans and non-binary models that aims to help media outlets better represent members of these communities as people not necessarily defined by their gender identities—people with careers, relationships, talents, passions, and home lives. Images are available through Creative Commons licenses.
Getty Open Content Program
The J. Paul Getty Museum's collection of content which is in the Public Domain or which they have chosen to release to public users. To search for Open Content, check the "Only Open Content" box under "Additional Filters"
NASA Image and Video Library
Images and videos created by NASA that are free to reuse for educational purposes and in textbooks.
Open Access at the Met
All images of public domain works at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Whether you're an artist or a designer, an educator or a student, a professional or a hobbyist, you now have more than 375,000 images of artworks from our collection to use, share, and remix—without restriction.
Pexels
Pexels is a free photo and video site. Although the items in Pexels are not licensed under the Creative Commons, they are free to use and modify without attribution, but cannot be used commercially without modification. More information on Pexel's license: https://www.pexels.com/license/
Smithsonian Image Gallery
Collection of digitized materials and images from the Smithsonian Museums. Unless otherwise noted, material in the Digital Library has generally been determined to be free from copyright or other restrictions based on a diligent search process
Unsplash
Unsplash is a site curating photos that are free to reuse. Their license is their own, and it differs a little from a CC0 license in that it prohibits commercial reuse. More information on the Unsplash License: https://unsplash.com/license
Wikimedia Commons
A collection of milliions of freely usable media files.

Below are some links to lists or collections of open data repositories. Some of these repositories or individual datasets may have restrictions on how the data can be used. Be sure to investigate the license of any material before you redistribute it.

Open Access Directory - Data Repository List
A list of repositories and databases for open data.
Registry of Research Data Repositories
The Registry of Research Data Repositories (Re3Data.org) allows you to browse data repositories by subject, title, or content type.

U.S. Government Data Sources

Data.gov
A major aggregator of data sets produced by the United States government.
The Census Bureau
The Census Bureau is the leading source of quality data about the nation's people and economy.

Below are some links to databases and search tools with open content. Remember, not all open content is licensed for every type of reuse or remix. It is your responsibility to check the license of materials you use and make sure you are using them appropriately.

Open Scholarly Articles

arXiv.org
An open access, e-print server of Mathematics articles, many submitted by authors prior to publication in journals. Hosted by Cornell University.

Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
DOAJ is a community-curated online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals. Use the limiters to filter by CC license type.
PubMed Central (PMC)
PubMed Central (PMC) is a free digital repository that archives open access full-text scholarly articles that have been published within the biomedical and life sciences journal literature.

Social Science Research Network
An online network devoted to the rapid worldwide dissemination of social science research. The Library does not have subscription to SSRN, but it does contain open access papers.

Open Historic Newspapers

Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers
A free website that provides access to information about historic newspapers and select digitized American newspaper pages.
Colorado Historic Newspaper Collection
A service of the Colorado State Library, the Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection (CHNC) currently includes 335+ newspapers published in Colorado primarily from 1859 up to 1924.

Searching Google with Usage Rights

Did you know you can locate items with Creative Commons licenses using Google? This page covers the basics of how. Remember, it's ultimately up to you to determine what license a work is published under, so be sure to double check your results.

To search for CC licensed images in Google:

Go to Google.com
In the bottom right corner of the Google homepage, click on Settings.
From the pop-up menu that appears select Advanced Search.
Fill out the search boxes with the terms you do or don't want to appear in your results.
Use the limiters below the search boxes to specifiy things like language and file type.
Choose your usage rights. The default is "not filtered by license," but you can change it to allign with whatever Creative Commons license would be appropriate for your needs. Remember to consider if you need to modify the work or if you need to combine it with other Creative Commons items that might have different licenses. (Learn more about Creative Commons licenses or which licenses can be combined.)
Search!

Kraemer Family Library

Open Educational Resources