Definition of Open Educational Resources (OER)
OER are freely and publicly available teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others. For example, instructors may download the material, tailor it to one’s course, save a copy locally to share with one’s students and share it back out with attribution. OER can include textbooks, course materials and full courses, modules, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge. An open source (or open) textbook is a textbook which is OER.
Definition of Open Access (OA)
Open access refers to teaching, learning and research materials that are available free online for anyone to use as is, but they may not be revised, remixed, or redistributed. This terminology is typically used for scholarly works (journals, books, etc.), but can also refer to other class materials. Examples of OA materials include government documents, articles from open access journals, reports from think tanks.
Description of Library-Licensed Course Content
“Library-licensed materials” are course materials, which are available free to library patrons. They include eBooks and print versions of books on reserve. The eBooks may or may not be downloadable/retainable; they may or may not be accessed offline; the license may allow for multiple users or only one user to use the material at the same time. Library-licensed materials can be adopted for courses. While they are free for library patrons, they are not free—rather, they have been paid for by the library.
Faculty can explore library databases to find course materials, including e-books, online video, images, data, articles, and more. They can adopt a library e-book as an alternative to print textbooks.
Adopted from: https://provost.umw.edu/oer/what-are-oer/