Divinity

There are lots of books, journals and other academic resources that are open access. This means they are free to access and don't require the Library to have a subscription for you to be able to access them. DiscoverEd has a range of open access material and when you do a search you can use the filters on the left hand side of screen to show only Open Access results. You can also limit the Resource Type to Books, if that is solely what you are interested in.

If a book is out of copyright, or the publisher has given Google permission, you will be able to see a preview of the book, and in some cases the entire text. If it is in the public domain you are free to download a PDF copy.

Edinburgh University Library uses Open Journals Systems (OJS) to provide a hosting platform for Open Access journals and Open Monograph Press (OMP) to provide a hosting platform for Open Access books. The service includes training, guidance and technical support and it is provided free of charge to staff and students of the University of Edinburgh.

An open textbook is a textbook that has been openly licensed so that it can be freely accessed, re-used, adapted and modified.

Interested to know what goes into producing an open e-textbook? In 2021 the Reid School of Music and the Open Education Resources (OER) service at the University of Edinburgh undertook a research and development project to explore the creation of an open etextbook using existing content from the Reid School of Music’s Fundamentals of Music Theory course. You can find out more about the whole project and access the final Open E-textbook they published on their blog.

Open libraries tend to include books that are out of copyright. You will normally be able to read the titles freely online but in some cases you may have to register with a site to "borrow" the e-book. Download options are not always available for these titles.