About the Mason OER Metafinder

https://mom.gmu.edu

The Mason OER Metafinder helps you find Open Educational Resources.  Unlike other OER discovery sites (e.g, OER Commons, OASIS, MERLOT, OpenStax, etc.) with our Metafinder you aren’t searching a static database that we’ve built.  Instead, the OER Metafinder launches a real-time, simultaneous search across 22 different sources of open educational materials as you hit the Search button.

OER Metafinder icon

Because it is a real-time, federated search, it can take a bit longer than searches of pre-indexed, curated content; however, as compensation the results returned are absolutely up-to-the-minute for each search target.  Additional results will continue to trickle in as the search continues running and you begin examining your results.

A distinct feature of the Mason OER Metafinder is the scope of our discovery service.  We’re searching well-known OER repositories like OpenStax, OER Commons, MERLOT but also sites like HathiTrust, DPLA, Internet Archive and NYPL Digital Collections where valuable but often overlooked (and often “open”) educational materials may be found.  

Given the many “standards” of metadata in the OER universe, we can’t guarantee that every item retrieved is “Open” in the strictest interpretation of that term…so make it a practice to check the rights of any item you use.

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Our OER Metafinder is built using the Explorit Everywhere! software developed by Deep Web Technologies in Santa Fe, New Mexico. We use their software to provide a number of different metafinders for Mason researchers (e.g., our Sciences Metafinder is a quite popular example).

Jillian Maynard, at the University of Hartford, has created a very nice video introduction to the Metafinder. If you want to know more about the Metafinder or have ideas for additional search targets, contact Wally Grotophorst.

 

What are we searching?

Is there a Search Widget?

Click here for code to place an accessibility-standards-compliant OER Metafinder search widget on your website.

Is there a simple link to the service?

You can use this:  https://mom.gmu.edu

Who’s using the Mason OER Metafinder (MOM)?

Here’s a list of libraries and other organizations linking to us from an OER guide as of May, 2021.  Beyond giving a shout-out to sites using MOM to discover OER content, the list also pulls together OER information guides from 450+ sites.

If your organization is offering a link or search box for our metafinder and you’re not on our list, send us an email.