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The LibraryODERSA publishing house
An ODERSA resource · Knowledge programmeA book only goes online once it is whole and read by someone else.

For teachers

There is no account to open, no licence to negotiate, and nobody to notify.

An old reading room photographed with nobody in it: shelves of vellum-bound volumes line the walls, and a large book lies open on a lectern in the foreground.
A reading room photographed as a survey, with nobody in it. A printable textbook is a textbook that reaches a classroom with no connection, no screen per pupil and no permission to request. It is the most robust format there is, and also the oldest.Credit

What this house offers you

This site will publish complete textbooks, free of charge, openly licensed, to read online and to print. Nothing here is reserved for a subscriber, nothing is unlocked with a code, and the association will never know that you came by: there is no account, no tracker and no audience measurement on this site.

Concretely, a book from this house is made to be photocopied for a whole class, translated for pupils whose first language is not the language of instruction, cut into units, and printed by a local printer if that costs less than the school copier. All of that is allowed by the licence, with no procedure at all.

The catalogue is empty to date. This page exists already because the conditions are settled: a teacher discovering a textbook needs to know within thirty seconds what they may do with it, and that answer does not depend on the first title.

Four intended uses, no permission needed

In class

Photocopy a chapter or the whole book, for every pupil. No quota, no declaration, no reprography levy owed to anyone for these pages.

At home

Give the file to families, put it on the school platform, send it by message. A pupil with no connection works on paper, a connected pupil works online.

In adult training

Reuse exercises in adult training material, in literacy work, in language teaching, in an association or a community centre.

In another language

Translate the book and distribute the translation under your own name as translator. One duty only: credit ODERSA as the source of the original text.

What you may do, what we ask

Without asking

  • Print, photocopy, bind, distribute, in class and outside it.
  • Modify: cut, reorder, change the examples for your own setting.
  • Translate, and publish the translation wherever you like.
  • Charge for printed copies, margin included, for the school fund.
  • Deposit the file on the platform of your authority, your ministry, your network.

What the association asks

  • Credit ODERSA and the address of this site, on the document your pupils actually hold.
  • Say that the text was modified, if you modified it, so your cuts are not attributed to us.
  • Do not reuse the editorial design: drop the text into your own template.
  • Report the mistakes you find. That is by far the most useful thing you can send us.

Adapting a book for your class

Four moves, and the textbook becomes yours without ceasing to be open.

  1. Take the text
    The book downloads. The open data of the site downloads too, from the settings panel, for anyone who would rather work on files than on pages.
  2. Cut and reorder
    Keep what serves your progression. A textbook adapted to a local curriculum is more useful than a complete one nobody opens.
  3. Lay it out again
    In your school template, not in ours. That is the only limit, and it takes five minutes.
  4. Credit and sign
    ODERSA as the source of the text, your name as the adapter, the CC BY 4.0 notice with its link. Your pupils then know where what they are reading comes from.

What teachers ask us

Do these photocopies have to be declared to a reprography body?

Not for these pages: the ODERSA licence already allows reproduction. Your school may have duties for other works, and those do not change. Check with your administration what applies where you are, because the association cannot answer for your country.

My pupils are minors. Is there anything to sign?

No. This site collects no data and asks for no account, so there is nothing to consent to and nothing to authorise. The association addresses adults and teachers; pupils reach the books through you.

Will the books come in an editable format?

That is the fairest question you can put to a publisher of open textbooks, and the honest answer is that the format of the source files will be settled with the first book. What is already settled: they will be public, and the licence allows modification.

May I request a textbook on a specific subject?

Yes, write to the publishing team. No promise will come back: the association opens one title at a time, and a teacher's request weighs on the decision without making it.

How will I know when a book comes out?

Through the What is new page, and through the feed that goes with it. No sign-up, no address to leave: a feed is read in a reader, and it needs to know nothing about you.

If a question about usage rights is left unclear on this page, write to the publishing team. A question that recurs joins the answers page, with its answer, and then serves everybody.