LibGuides: Free Engineering Information Resources: Books & OER

Free Books

There are a number sites that provide free online access to books related to engineering. Here are some of them:

Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB)
The primary aim of DOAB is to increase discoverability of open access books. The directory is open to all publishers who publish academic, peer reviewed books, provided that these publications are open access and meet academic standards.
You can browse the directory by subject, publisher, language, and collection.
Project Gutenberg - Engineering Books
Project Gutenberg is an online library of more the 75,000 free ebooks. All Project Gutenberg books are completely free and always will be. Since the site focuses on older texts, this site will be of most interest for history of engineering topics and topics related to literature and the arts.
National Academies Press (NAP)
The NAP publishes more than 200 books a year on a wide range of topics in science, engineering, and medicine, providing authoritative, independently-researched information on important matters in science and health policy. They offer more than 8,500 titles in PDF format. Almost all of these PDFs can be downloaded for free by the chapter or the entire book.* See https://nap.nationalacademies.org/content/about-pdf for more information on accessing our digital content.

Open Educational Resources

In addition to open book sites, there are also several sites that specialize in open educational resources (OER) that can be used for college level instruction. You can find out more about MSU's OER program by visiting our OER LibGuide or by contacting, Colleen Lyon, Engineering Librarian.

OpenStax Textbooks
OpenStax is the world’s largest publisher of open education resources (OER) and a provider of interactive learning technologies and education research for high school and college. They are a nonprofit initiative of Rice University.
Open Textbooks for Engineering
Our listing of open textbooks is organized by engineering discipline. To browse resources within a discipline, select the appropriate icon below. Note that some specific disciplines have been grouped within a larger discipline (e.g., transportation engineering texts can be found in civil & environmental engineering). This list is maintained by the Engineering Library Division of ASEE.
Open Textbook Library
The Open Textbook Library has 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. All textbooks are either used at multiple higher education institutions; or affiliated with an institution, scholarly society, or professional organization. The library currently includes almost 1700 textbooks, with more being added all the time. Two relevant subjects for engineering are Computer Science and Information Systems Textbooks and Engineering. The Open Textbook Library is supported by the Open Education Network.
OER Commons
Large database of OER materials for K-12 and higher ed. Use the search filters to limit your results to lower division, upper division, or graduate level. OER Commons includes all types of OER and not just textbooks.