Open Text Book

‘Stratospheric Ozone - An Electronic Textbook’

Stratospheric Ozone - An Electronic Textbook is from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Atmospheric Chemistry and Dynamics Branch. As it is produced by a US government department, is in the public domain.

Add comment September 6th, 2007

‘Wireless Networking in the Developing World’ and ‘How to Accelerate Your Internet’

Here are two interesting open textbooks with practical instructions about communications technologies:

• Wireless Networking in the Developing World. Creative Commons - Attribution ShareAlike (BY-SA)
• How to Accelerate Your Internet. Creative Commons - Attribution ShareAlike (BY-SA)

2 comments August 22nd, 2007

Geology

Here are a couple of textbooks in the public domain, made available by the U.S. Geological Survey:

• Study Guide for a Beginning Course in Ground-Water Hydrology by O. Lehn Franke, Thomas E. Reilly, Ralph J. Haefner and Dale L. Simmons
• This Dynamic Earth: The Story of Plate Tectonics by Jacquelyne Kious and Robert I. Tilling

1 comment August 6th, 2007

Econometrics

Michael Creel at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona wrote Econometrics in 2005. The book and its source are available under either the a General Public License (GPL), or under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 license (CC-BY-SA).

3 comments July 25th, 2007

‘A Text-Book of the History of Painting’

John Charles Van Dyke’s A Text-Book of the History of Painting was originally published in 1909, meaning that it has now passed into the public domain in many jurisdictions. It is available from Project Gutenberg under the Project Gutenberg License, which is not fully open as it restricts commercial use. However, if all mentions of Project Gutenberg are removed, along with the header, footer and license, then what remains is in the public domain - and is therefore open.

The book is rich with images and though parts of its commentary seem dated, it would be interesting to hear the opinion of someone who is knowledgeable about the subject!

3 comments July 17th, 2007

Some philosophy books

Here are a few from the Philosophy department at Lander University:

• Introduction to Ethical Studies by Lee Archie and John G. Archie. GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL)
• Reading for Philosophical Inquiry by Lee Archie and John G. Archie. GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL)
• Readings in Eastern Philosophy by Lee Archie and John G. Archie. GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL)
• Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha edited by Lee Archie, John G. Archie, Jeffrey Baggett and Bill Poston. GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL)
• Readings in the History of Aesthetics by Lee Archie and John G. Archie. GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL)

Add comment July 6th, 2007

Linguistics

One from Mike Gasser, Associate Professor of Computer Science and Cognitive Science at Indiana University:

• How language works - the cognitive science of linguistics. GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL)

Add comment July 3rd, 2007

Electronics textbooks and Q&A sheets

These are both from Tony R. Kuphaldt, industrial electronics instructor at Bellingham Technical College, Washington:

• Lessons In Electric Circuits. A series of textbooks about electricity and electronics. Available under a Design Science License (DSL).
• Socratic Electronics. A large number of question and answer sheets about electronics. Available under a Creative Commons - Attribution license (BY)

Add comment June 26th, 2007

A few open physics textbooks

Here they are…

• The Light and Matter series of physics textbooks by Ben Crowell (Fullerton College, CA) is used by a number of American schools, colleges and universities. Available under Creative Commons - Attribution ShareAlike (BY-SA). Ben also runs The Assayer - a listing of free books with user reviews.
• Calculus-Based Physics by Jeffrey W. Schnick (Saint Anselm College). Creative Commons - Attribution ShareAlike (BY-SA).
• A Radically Modern Approach to Freshman Physics by David J. Raymond (New Mexico Tech). GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL).

3 comments June 24th, 2007

Some open maths textbooks

I’ve just been looking through a couple of quite large listings of maths textbooks: Textbooks in Mathematics by Alex Stefanov at the ICTP (mirrored at geocities), and Online Mathematics Textbooks by George Cain who is retired from the Georgia Institute of Technology. Both bring together a wide variety of material from various academics, researchers and enthusiasts.

Some of the textbooks listed are explicitly open, but many are made available for non-commercial purposes or don’t have any licensing information.

Here are a few of the open ones:

• A First Course in Linear Algebra by Rob Beezer (University of Puget Sound). GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL)
• A Problem Course in Mathematical Logic by Stefan Bilaniuk (Trent University). GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL)
• Measure Theory by D. H. Fremlin (University of Essex). Available under a Design Science License (DSL).
• Introduction to Probability by Charles Grinstead (Swarthmore College) & J. Laurie Snell (Dartmouth College). GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL)
• Linear Algebra by Jim Hefferon (Saint Michaels College, Vermont). Creative Commons - Attribution ShareAlike (BY-SA).

The American Mathematical Society makes quite a few textbooks available on their Books Online page, but these do not seem to be open.

Many lecture notes by David Santos are available on Open Math Text under the discontinued Open Publication License which is not fully open as it restricts commercial re-use.

There are also many maths textbooks under Creative Commons Non-Commercial and/or No Derivatives licenses - such as Shlomo Sternberg’s books, Dan Sloughter’s calculus texts or Victor Shoup’s A Computational Introduction to Number Theory and Algebra.

This looks to suggest that:

1. It is worth chasing up textbook authors to ask them to clarify whether or not their work is open, and to suggest using an explicitly open license if it is. (See Dead knowledge: why being explicit about openness matters for more on this.)
2. It should be made clear that not all Creative Commons licenses are open. (As was commented on in iCommons 2007: Retrospective Reflections.)

2 comments June 23rd, 2007