LibGuides: OER By Discipline: History

OER Collections

JSTOR Open Content — History
Thousands of Open Access ebooks are available from top scholarly publishers. Focus on high-quality content, ease of use, and digital preservation.
MERLOT — History
MERLOT is a curated collection of free and open online teaching, learning, and faculty development services contributed and used by an international education community.
OER Commons — History
OER Commons provides a curated collection of textbooks and other course material for the study of history.

Textbooks

"A History of the United States, Vol. 2" — Saylor Academy
A History of the United States was constructed by reading and experimenting with each of the textbooks that are on the market.
"A People's History of Modern Europe" — William A. Pelz
"A Survey of Modern European History" — Wikibooks
"Boundless US History" — Lumen
Educational content originally curated by Boundless, imported to the Lumen Platform. Except where otherwise noted, all material in Boundless courses are licensed under a CC BY-SA license.
"Boundless World History" — Lumen
Educational content originally curated by Boundless, imported to the Lumen Platform. Except where otherwise noted, all material in Boundless courses are licensed under a CC BY-SA license.
"Our Story: An Ancillary to US History"
A US history ancillary/textbook that examines some traditional some non-traditional aspects of American social, cultural, gender, racial, political, and military history. Most chapters include content provided by community college students.
"The American Yawp" — Stanford U Press
A Massively Collaborative Open U.S. History Textbook
"U.S. History" — OpenStax
Designed to meet the scope and sequence requirements of most introductory courses.
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The text provides a balanced approach to U.S. history, considering the people, events, and ideas that have shaped the United States from both the top down (politics, economics, diplomacy) and bottom up (eyewitness accounts, lived experience). U.S. History covers key forces that form the American experience, with particular attention to issues of race, class, and gender.
"US History" — Wikibooks
This textbook is based on the College Entrance Examination Board test in Advanced Placement United States History.
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The test is a standard on the subject, covering what most students in the United States study in high school and college, so we treat it as the best reference.
"World History, Volume 1" — OpenStax
Designed to meet the scope and sequence requirements of most introductory courses.
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Designed to meet the scope and sequence of a world history course to 1500 offered at both two-year and four-year institutions.
"World History, Volume 2" — OpenStax
Designed to meet the scope and sequence requirements of most introductory courses.
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Designed to meet the scope and sequence of a world history course from 1400 offered at both two-year and four-year institutions.
"World History: Cultures, States, and Societies to 1500" — BCcampus OpenEd
Open textbooks in the B.C. Open Textbook Collection come in multiple formats.
LibreTexts — History Bookshelves
The Bookshelves area in this LibreTexts Library holds texts that are curated by the LibreTexts Development team and can be used either directly or as content for building customized remixes.
MERLOT — History Textbooks
OER Commons — History Textbooks
These textbooks are either in use at academic institutions or have been produced by subject matter experts affiliated with academic or professional institutions.
Open Research Library — History Textbooks
The ORL is planned to include all Open Access book content worldwide on one platform.
Open Textbook Library — History Textbooks
These textbooks in the Open Textbook Library are considered open because they are free to use and distribute, and are licensed to be freely adapted or changed with proper attribution.
Project Gutenberg — History Bookshelves

Open Courses

"United States History I" — Lumen
Based on the OpenStax US History text.
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Key topics include early globalization and European exploration, colonial societies, the English Empire, America’s War for Independence, the creation of the American Republic, the industrial transformation, Jacksonian democracy, westward expansion, “King” Cotton and idealism in the antebellum South, the troubled 1850s, and the Civil War to Reconstruction.
"United States History II" — Lumen
Based on the OpenStax US History text.
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This course covers the chronological history of the United States from Reconstruction through the beginning of the twenty-first century.
MERLOT — History Online Courses
MERLOT is a curated collection of free and open online teaching, learning, and faculty development services contributed and used by an international education community.
MIT OpenCourseWare — History Courses
MIT OpenCourseWare makes the materials used in the teaching of almost all of MIT's subjects available on the Web, free of charge.
Open Michigan — History Courses
History at Michigan is global, multidimensional, interdisciplinary.
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Regularly ranked among the top history departments in the country, we combine state-of-the-art research with innovative teaching and a commitment to embrace all the diversity of the past. With nearly half our faculty holding joint appointments, reaching beyond traditional boundaries is central to our intellectual and pedagogical culture.
Open Yale Courses — African American Studies Courses
Examines, from numerous disciplinary perspectives, the experiences of people of African descent in Black Atlantic societies, including the United States, the Caribbean, and Latin America.
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Most of the lectures and course material within Open Yale Courses are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 license. Unless explicitly set forth in the applicable Credits section of a lecture, third-party content is not covered under the Creative Commons license.
Open Yale Courses — Classics Courses
Coursework emphasizes the development of an overall knowledge of ancient Greek and Roman civilizations.
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Most of the lectures and course material within Open Yale Courses are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 license. Unless explicitly set forth in the applicable Credits section of a lecture, third-party content is not covered under the Creative Commons license.
Open Yale Courses — History Courses
Courses range in focus from the earliest recorded historical periods up through the modern day.
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Most of the lectures and course material within Open Yale Courses are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 license. Unless explicitly set forth in the applicable Credits section of a lecture, third-party content is not covered under the Creative Commons license.
Saylor Academy — History Courses
Excluding course final exams, content authored by Saylor Academy is available under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license. You are free to share and adapt with attribution.
Saylor Legacy Courses
These courses are inactive but available as resources. Listed in ABC order by department code.

Visual Resources

A Biography of America
Video series. American history is presented as a living narrative.
Europeana Public Domain Collections
Flickr: The Commons
Yahoo/Lib. of Congress partnership includes over 200,000 images from more than 50 international cultural heritage institutions.
Smithsonian Open Access Images
TED Talks — Ancient World
TED Talks — Archaeology
TED Talks — History
Wikipedia Featured Pictures: History

See and Art Visual Resources for more CC and Public Domain images of historical art. More visual sources are also available in Historical Primary Sources below.

Supplementary Materials & Tools

History & Primary Sources Subject Websites
From the "Subject Websites" directory LibGuide. Some website materials may be copyrighted, but all are available for students to access.
Reading & Writing in the Disciplines: History/Social Studies
Learn research, practice, and tools for integrating discipline literacy into mathematics, science, English, and history/social studies content based lessons.
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Includes 4 units on history in sequential order; linked is the first one.
SSRN History Research Network
A repository for preprints devoted to the rapid dissemination of scholarly research. Copyrighted, but available to view and cite.
U.S. Presidents Quiz
Wolfram Alpha: History
Compute expert-level answers using Wolfram’s breakthrough algorithms, knowledgebase and AI technology.
Writing Center Tips & Tools: Writing for History
From UNC at Chapel Hill.

Historical Primary Sources

The Avalon Project
A project of the Yale Law School that provides full-text access to documents and supporting texts from ancient history to today in the fields of law, history, economics, politics, diplomacy and government.
British Library on Flickr
British Museum
Most materials are published with a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
David Rumsey Map Collection
Florida Memory: State Library and Archives of Florida
Getty Search Gateway
Internet History Sourcebooks Project
Three main sections: ancient, medieval, and modern, as well as subsections. The sourcebooks are collections of public domain and copy-permitted historical texts. From Fordham University.
Library of Congress Digital Collections
Library of Congress Primary Documents in American History
Los Angeles County Museum of Art: Public Domain
U.S. National Archives
National Museum of American History: Online Exhibitions
Smithsonian Collections
Smithsonian Libraries Digital Collections
Yale University Art Gallery

More sources are available in the History & Primary Sources listing from the "Subject Websites" directory LibGuide, and in the History Primary Sources listing from the "Finding Primary Sources" LibGuide. Some website materials found here may be copyrighted and not OER/CC/public domain, but all are available for students to access.