Library Guides: PA Forward at Madlyn L. Hanes Library, Penn State Harrisburg: Open and Affordable Textbook Options

Affordable Textbooks and Open Educational Resources

Course Reserve Textbooks

Faculty members may place personal copies of textbooks on reserve, and the Library, if funds are available, may purchase in-demand/highly-used textbooks that all students can borrow on an hourly basis to complete their weekly reading in the Library. The selection of available textbooks may vary each semester. Generally, reserve texts check out for 2 or 4 hours and can only be used within the Library. Some texts or other reserve materials may be borrowed for longer periods of time, from 1-7 days, and can leave the Library. Be sure to verify the return period when borrowing a reserve book. See the list of currently available reserve textbooks below.

Course Reserve Textbooks - 2021-2022

Electronic Reserves

Some ebooks, articles, or book chapters may be on electronic reserve for your class, which means you can view them whenever needed online. These resources, if available for your course, will appear on the Library Resources tab for your class in Canvas. You can also search for available e-reserves by Course Number on the list here: E-Reserves Listing.

Open Educational Resources

Penn State defines Open Educational Resources (OER) as any type of educational materials that are available to the University community with little or no cost. Typically, the nature of Penn State's open materials means that students, faculty, and staff can legally and freely copy, use, adapt, and re-share them within the University community. These practices often fall under the model for Open Pedagogy which includes, at a basic level, teaching with OER and embracing open educational practices in the classroom.

OER Discovery Tools and Networks

Explore the links below to search for OER related to your discipline and interests!

You may consider suggesting open and affordable texts to your professors in place of high-cost, traditional textbooks.

OpenStax
OpenStax is a nonprofit educational initiative based at Rice University. They publish high-quality, peer-reviewed, openly licensed college textbooks that are absolutely free online and low cost in print.
Open Textbook Library
Open textbooks are textbooks that have been funded, published, and licensed to be freely used, adapted, and distributed. These books have been reviewed by faculty from a variety of colleges and universities to assess their quality. These books can be downloaded for no cost, or printed at low cost.
OASIS
OASIS has been developed by the SUNY Geneseo Library and currently searches open content from 90 different sources and contains 364,699 records. You can search for OER by subject and see how that subject relates to other disciplines. You can search by modules, textbooks, and even full courses.
MERLOT
The MERLOT system provides access to curated online learning and support materials and content creation tools, led by an international community of educators, learners and researchers.