Announcing access to BC Campus OpenEd’s collection of 97 open textbooks in accessible formats for people with print disabilties! These open textbooks are openly licensed using a Creative Commons license, and are available in various e-book formats free of charge, or through print-on-demand books available at cost. 

NNELS is facilitating access to these publicly-available textbooks as an “extended search” option. Extended search means that when a search at nnels.ca returns no results, the option to “Search other services” for open content appears. Included in those “other services” are LibriVox, Bookshare, and now, BC Campus OpenEd’s Open Textbooks. To see how this works, visit nnels.ca and search for “introductory statistics” and follow the prompts. 

An important facet of the Open Textbooks is that they were written and designed with accessibility in mind. All are available in more than one format, and cover a range of topics including arts, business, health, recreation and tourism, science, social science, trades, and upgrading programs. 

The BC Campus Open Textbooks Project was Canada’s first official open textbook project. Funding for the first stage was announced by the B.C. provincial government's Ministry of Advanced Education in October 2012, with a second round of funding being announced in the spring of 2014, particularly for trades and skills training. 

A full listing of the Open Textbooks can be found at http://open.bccampus.ca, and more information about the project is available at http://bccampus.ca/open-textbook-project/

Enjoy!