In October 2012, the BC Ministry of Advanced Education announced its support for the creation of open textbooks for the 40 highest-enrolled first and second year subject areas in the province’s public post-secondary system. BCcampus is tasked with co-ordination of the project because of our 10-year experience funding open educational resources (OER) through the Online Program Development Fund.

In the spring of 2014, BCcampus was asked to also add 20 textbooks targeting trades and skills training.

The goal of this Open Textbook Project is to provide flexible and affordable access to higher education resources in B.C. by making open textbooks available for use by B.C. faculty, and digital versions of the texts are free of charge to faculty and students. Printed copies are also available on demand for a low cost.

While the content is specific to the B.C. Open Textbook project and the PressBooks Textbook authoring platform, there is information here that will be useful for anyone working with open textbooks, open educational resources and Creative Commons material.

This book is ever evolving. It is being designed to support faculty who wish to create a new, or adapt an existing, open textbook.