Open Educational Resources (OER)

"Free" Resources

The high cost of textbooks is a factor in a lot of decisions to switch to Open Educational Resources. Resources described on this page can help instructors teach and students learn without breaking the bank. They are not, however OER.

Remember that a key aspect of OER is the right to retain a copy of the OER. Links to regular Web content can grow "stale" and no longer point to a web page; the content may change, or disappear entirely without warning. OER's right to retain insures against this problem.

Library Databases

The Durham Tech library's database subscriptions provide access to articles, e-books, and other online resources, which are free for you and your students to use; however, this use is governed by license agreements and copyright law. Please consult the library's Copyright Guidelines research guide for assistance in using library-subscribed resources as course materials.

Other considerations:

• Library-subscribed content within a given database changes over time. For example, titles are routinely added or removed by the vendor.
• Some library resources, including some e-books and many audiobooks, limit the number of users who can access them simultaneously.

Use the "Online Library Resources" search box on this page to discover digital content available to you and your students. To use any digital resources in your classes, it is recommended to provide a link to the resources in Sakai, rather than (for example) emailing copies of the resources to students. See the section "Linking to Library Database Content" on this page for more information.

Open Access

Open Access is similar in principle to Open Education, in that its goal is to provide research for free to anyone. Open Access refers to scholarly articles that are intentionally published on the open Web instead of behind paywalls. They are subject to copyright laws, but anyone may read them for free.

See the section titled "Open Access Articles" on this page for more information.

As always, please reach out to the library for assistance at any time.

Because the Durham Tech library pays subscription fees to provide access to its digtital resources, students, faculty, and staff must "authenticate"--prove that they are affiliated with Durham Tech--in order to use these resources. That authentication process happens when a "proxy prefix" is added to the beginning of a URL, prompting someone who is off campus to input their Durham Tech username and password before continuing. (On campus, anyone is able to access the library databases without authenticating.)

When linking to resources from library databases, including articles, videos, e-books and more, you have to make sure the link is configured correctly for it to work. Here are some ways to do that:

1. In your browser's address bar, if the URL of the resource contains proxy055.nclive.org, then that will direct readers through the authentication process and you can simply copy and paste the URL. For example:
   https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.proxy055.nclive.org/lib/durhamtech-ebooks/detail.action?docID=1897233
2. If you found the resource you want to use via Search Library, you can click the chain link icon to the right of a search result for a permanent link that passes through the authentication process, even though the URL itself doesn't show the proxy prefix:
   http://tinyurl.com/yxmka3f2
3. If you want to embed a video from Films on Demand in your Sakai site, click the video's "Share" button, then choose "Embed/Link" and copy the URL.

The following resources are not OER: the content owners assert their copyright or require agreement to a Terms of Service. They are free to use, but may require users to create an account, or may keep some services behind a paywall, as of March 2022.

Open Access (OA) is a designation, different from Open Educational Resources, indicating scholarly articles that can be accessed and shared freely, without paying for them or authenticating. Unlike OER, OA resources cannot be modified.

There are even entire OA scholarly journals. Some OA journals are indexed in Search Library and are included in library databases, even though free versions of the articles can be found by typing their titles into a Web search engine. The Directory of Open Access Journals (see below) indexes over 15,000 high-quality OA journals, and most of those at the article level.