History

Canadian History: Pre-Confederation

By: John Douglas Belshaw, Thompson Rivers University

Canadian History: Pre-Confederation is a survey text that introduces undergraduate students to important themes in North American history to 1867. Written and reviewed by subject experts drawn from colleges and universities, this is the first open textbook on the topic of Canadian history.

Includes: instructor resources (videos)

Attribution: Canadian History: Pre-Confederation by John Douglas Belshaw is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 International License.

Canadian History: Post-Confederation

By:  John Douglas Belshaw, Thompson Rivers University

This textbook introduces aspects of the history of Canada since Confederation. “Canada” in this context includes Newfoundland and all the other parts that come to be aggregated into the Dominion after 1867.

Includes: instructor resources (videos).

Attribution:  Canadian History: Post-Confederation by John Douglas Belshaw is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 International License.

World History: Cultures, States, and Societies to 1500

By: Eugene Berger, George L. Israel, Charlotte Miller, Brian Parkinson, Andrew Reeves and Nadejda Williams, Georgia Gwinnett College

World History: Cultures, States, and Societies to 1500 is a peer-reviewed textbook which offers a comprehensive introduction to the history of humankind from prehistory to 1500.

Includes: high-resolution images and maps, chronologies, and learning questions to help guide student learning.

Attribution:  World History: Cultures, States, and Societies to 1500 by Eugene Berger, George L. Israel, Charlotte Miller, Brian Parkinson, Andrew Reeves and Nadejda Williams is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 4.0 International License.

Yale Lectures: The Early Middle Ages, 284–1000

This open course looks into the major developments in the political, social, and religious history of Western Europe from the accession of Diocletian to the feudal transformation.

Includes: all course materials (zipped file).

U.S. History

This open textbook covers the breadth of the chronological history of the United States and the key forces and major developments that together form the American experience, with particular attention paid to considering issues of race, class, and gender.

Includes: instructor and student resources.

Sage American History – Era of the American Revolution

This peer-reviewed open textbook is a comprehensive look at the American Revolution, containing links to primary source documents and other resources of this important era in U.S. history.

Includes: instructor and student resources.

Global History and New Polycentric Approaches

This well-reviewed open textbook rethinks the ways global history is envisioned and conceptualized in diverse countries such as China, Japan, Mexico or Spain, and considers how global issues are connected with our local and national communities.

Includes: learner exercises

Keys to Understanding the Middle East

By: Alam Payind and Melinda McClimans, Ohio State University

This reviewed open textbook covers the fundamentals and is intended for readers who have never studied the Middle East, or experts who may wish to fill gaps in their knowledge of the region from other disciplines.

Includes: instructor and student resources

Attribution:  Key to Understanding the Middle East by Alam Payind and Melinda McClimans is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 4.0 International License

Historical and Contemporary Realities: Movement Towards Reconciliation

This open textbook is written as a resource for educators to teach students about the Indigenous historical significance of the lands encompassing the Robinson-Huron Treaty area and more specifically the Greater Sudbury and Manitoulin area. It also, through the use of interactive mapping strategies, serves as a guide for educators to develop a similar resource to document Indigenous stories from their own areas.

Includes: instructor and student resources

Western Civilization: A Concise History – Volume 1

This peer-reviewed open textbook is about the origins of civilization in Mesopotamia c. 8,000 BCE through the early Middle Ages in Europe c. 1,000 CE. This volume covers topics including Mesopotamia,Egypt, Persia, Greece, Rome, the Islamic caliphates, and the early European Middle Ages.

Western Civilization: A Concise History – Volume 2

This open textbook looks at the early Middle Ages to the French Revolution in 1789 CE. This volume covers topics including the High Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the European conquest of the Americas, the Reformation, the Scientific Revolution, and the Enlightenment.

Western Civilization: A Concise History – Volume 3

This open textbook looks at the Napoleonic era to the recent past. Volume 3 covers topics including the Industrial Revolution, the politics of Europe in the nineteenth century, modern European imperialism, the world wars, fascism, Nazism, and the Holocaust, the postwar era, the Cold War, and recent developments in economics and politics.

Confronting Canadian Migration History

Edited by: Daniel Ross, Université du Québec à Montréal

The essays published here speak to the broad range of research being done in Canadian migration history; they also highlight the commitment of their authors to an engaged, public-facing scholarly practice. Read together, we believe they offer a much-needed historical perspective on contemporary Canadian debates around immigration and refuge, questions that cut to the heart of who we are as a society.

Attribution: Confronting Canadian Migration History edited by Daniel Ross is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike (CC BY-SA 4.0) International License.

Public Domain Resources

Any works that are in the Public Domain (creative works to which no exclusive intellectual property rights apply) can be freely used in your courses.  These texts can be hosted at Ryerson and customized (introductions, glossaries, annotations, supplementary materials) for your course.

Examples:  Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, Tartuffe

Project Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg is a library of over 60,000 free eBooks that is a great resource for finding out-of-copyright works.  Project Gutenberg eBooks are mostly older literary works, published before 1924.

Contact your subject librarian for more information on finding and using public domain works.

If you have questions about Open Educational Resources in your subject area, please contact your subject liaison librarian.