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Open Access Textbooks and Other Open (Free) Resources For USG Faculty and Students : Affordable Learning Georgia

This guide is designed to provide information about openly accessible textbooks and other scholarly information.

USG Open Textbooks

Affordable Learning Georgia (ALG):

University System of Georgia (USG) initiative to promote student success by providing affordable textbook alternative; A one-stop service to help USG faculty and staff identify lower-cost, electronic, free, and Open Educational Resources, building on the cost-effective subscription resources provided by GALILEO and the USG libraries; A California State University-MERLOT partner benefit service

History in the Making: A History of the People of the United States of America to 1877

In April 2013 the University Press of North Georgia published a textbook for US History I. The electronic version is available for free while a print version can be purchased for $35. History in the Making: A History of the People of the United States of America to 1877 is licensed by The University System of Georgia.

Collaborative Statistics

Collaborative Statistics was written by Barbara Illowsky and Susan Dean, faculty members at De Anza College in Cupertino, California. The textbook was developed over several years and has been used in regular and honors-level classroom settings and in distance learning classes. This textbook is intended for introductory statistics courses being taken by students at two– and four–year colleges who are majoring in fields other than math or engineering. Intermediate algebra is the only prerequisite. The book focuses on applications of statistical knowledge rather than the theory behind it.

Open Textbooks

An open textbook is a digital textbook offered online by its author(s). The “open” in open textbooks refers to the type of license the book is released under. Open licenses provide a standardized way for authors of creative works to grant permissions that allow free and legal sharing, use, re-purposing, and remixing of their works by others. Open textbooks are publicly available and freely accessible online in a variety of formats that can be read online or downloaded for reading on personal computers, e-readers, or other mobile devices. Students who wish to have a traditional print copy can, in many cases, purchase a hard copy of the textbook at significant cost savings. Open licenses allow instructors to adapt, remix, or customize existing open textbooks to maximize instructional content to meet their own learning objectives.