Library: OER: Open Educational Resources at SC4: Visual & Performing Arts

Contact SC4 Library

SC4 Library

Contact:

St. Clair County Community College Library
323 Erie St., P.O. Box 5015
Port Huron, MI 48061-5015
Library Main (810) 989-5640
Reference Services (810) 989-5532
SMS (810) 515-7343
library@sc4.edu

Note to Faculty

Open Educational Resources are educational materials and resources offered freely and openly for anyone to use and under some licenses to re-mix, improve, and redistribute. This page provides links to resources relevant to your discipline. Use these links to find high-quality OER for your courses.

Tips for finding and using OER:

1. There are lots of OER materials out there. It takes time and persistence to find the ones that best fit you and your students' academic needs

2. Instead of focusing on a textbook that you want to replace, focus on what you want your students to know or do.

3. Use the resources on this page and on the Finding OER page as starting points for finding quality resources related to your discipline. If you need help finding additional resources, contact one of the OER team members.

4. If you find an article in a library database that you want to use in a course, SC4 librarians can assist you in copyright considerations and providing access to your students through reserves, an online research guide, or assist in linking in your online course.

ART Resources

Art Appreciation by Lumen Learning & Wendy Riley based on Christopher Gildow’s Art Appreciation
Introduction to Art by Bonnie J. Robinson (Editor); Pamela Sachant (Other); Rita Tekippe (Other); Jeffrey LeMieux (Other); Peggy Blood (Other)
Call Number: ebook - CC-BY-SA

ISBN: 9781940771298

Publication Date: 2015
Guide to Italian Art in the 1300s by Ruth Ezra; Beth Harris; Steven Zucker
Call Number: ebook

Publication Date: 2020

CC BY-NC-SA
Guide to Italian Art in the 1400s by Ruth Ezra; Beth Harris; Steven Zucker
Call Number: ebook

Publication Date: 2020

CC BY-NC-SA

Ancient World Image Bank
Free digital imagery for the study of the ancient world. Created by the NYU Institute for the Study of the Ancient World.
Art History on Khan Academy
Videos, interactive quizzes, and other learning tools ranging from Art History basics to art touching nearly all time periods and across the globe.
Brooklyn Museum
View, download, and learn about the collections of the Brooklyn Museum. Licenses of works available on this site are noted in each item record.
Calisphere
Calisphere provides free access to unique and historically important artifacts for research, teaching, and curious exploration. Discover over 650,000 photographs, documents, letters, artwork, diaries, oral histories, films, advertisements, musical recordings, and more. The content is available for research, teaching, and private study.
Creative Commons - Open Archives
Use this prototype to find images that you can use and remix, across several open archives
Europeana fashion collection
More than 700.000 fashion objects can be accessed, shared and promoted on-line, and that brings together more than 30 public and private archives and museums, coming from 13 European countries, in order to collect and give public access to high quality digital fashion content.
Guggenheim Modern Art Books
As a vital part of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation’s mission as an educational institution, the Guggenheim Museum’s Publications Department publishes books and catalogues to document its exhibitions and collections.
Object Trails - The British Museum
Our trails will take you on fascinating tours, highlighting the most popular objects on display and covering a variety of themes.
WikiBooks: Art History
Outline of Art History survey

GD Resources

Graphic Design and Print Production Fundamentals by Wayne Collins; Alex Haas; Ken Jeffery; Alan Martin; Roberto Medeiros; Steven Tomljanovic
Call Number: ebook - CC BY

Publication Date: 2015

Creative Commons image search
Search Flickr, Google Images, Wikimedia, and more for openly licensed image and other multimedia resources.
Pixabay
All images and videos on Pixabay are released free of copyrights under Creative Commons CC0. You may download, modify, distribute, and use them royalty free for anything you like, even in commercial applications. Attribution is not required.
Pixar in a Box
Pixar in a Box is a behind-the-scenes look at how Pixar artists do their jobs. You will be able to animate bouncing balls, build a swarm of robots, and make virtual fireworks explode.
Wikimedia Commons
a collection of millions of freely usable media files to which anyone can contribute.

MUS Resources

Music on the Move by Danielle Fosler-Lussier
Call Number: ebook - open access

ISBN: 9780472074501

Publication Date: 2020
Music Theory for the 21st-Century Classroom by Robert Hutchinson
Call Number: ebook - Free Documentation License (GNU)

Publication Date: 2017
Sight-Reading for Guitar by Chelsea Green
Call Number: ebook - CC BY

Publication Date: 2020
Understanding Music: Past and Present by N. Alan Clark; Thomas Heflin; Jeffrey Kluball; Elizabeth Kramer
Call Number: ebook - CC BY-SA

ISBN: 9781940771335

Publication Date: 2016

CC Mixter
This is a community music remixing site featuring remixes and samples licensed under Creative Commons licenses.
Music on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons license. You are free to download and sample from music on this site and share the results with anyone, anywhere, anytime. Some songs might have certain restrictions, depending on their specific licenses. Each submission is marked clearly with the license that applies to it.
Free Music Archive
The Free Music Archive offers free downloads under Creative Commons and other licenses.
LibreTexts: Music Theory
This text is primarily designed to serve as a textbook for a college-level music theory fundamentals course. However, it also has the flexibility to serve equally well for a typical core curriculum college-level Music Theory I or Harmony I course. Our goal is to deliver sufficient information to enable the student to be able to evaluate and analyze select music from the literature as quickly as is practical. Secondly, we seek to provide sufficient instruction to enable a student to begin writing music as quickly as is practical. In order to develop a complete argument, it is important that the student understand that this text “assumes a blank slate.” No prior knowledge on the part of the student is assumed. This text is maintained by UC Davis.
LibreTexts: Understanding Basic Music Theory (OpenStax)
The main purpose of the course, however, is to explore basic music theory so thoroughly that the interested student will then be able to easily pick up whatever further theory is wanted. Music history and the physics of sound are included to the extent that they shed light on music theory. Students who find the section on acoustics (The Physical Basis) uninteresting may skip it at first, but should then go back to it when they begin to want to understand why musical sounds work the way they do. Remember, the main premise of this course is that a better understanding of where the basics come from will lead to better and faster comprehension of more complex ideas. Linked version of this text is maintained by UC Davis.
Open Music Library
Curated by a community of music scholars, students, teachers and librarians, the Open Music Library
brings together peer-reviewed journal articles, books and music scores from the world’s digital collections.
Soundation
Soundation is a powerful online music studio with professional features like recording, effects, virtual instruments and over 700 free loops and sounds.
Understanding Music: Past & Present
Open textbook for a Music Appreciation course published by University System of Georgia, University Press of North Georgia.

THA Resources

An Introduction to Technical Theatre by Tal Sanders (Illustrator)
Call Number: ebook - CC BY-NC

ISBN: 9781945398872

Publication Date: 2018
Technical Theatre Practicum - Version 1 by Christopher R Boltz
Call Number: ebook - CC BY

Publication Date: 2019
Theatrical Worlds by Charlie Mitchell (Editor)
Call Number: ebook - CC-BY-NC-ND

ISBN: 9781616101664

Publication Date: 2014

American Variety Stage: Vaudeville & Popular Entertainment 1870-1920
This collection illustrates the vibrant and diverse forms of popular entertainment, especially vaudeville, that thrived from 1870-1920. Included are 334 English- and Yiddish-language playscripts, 146 theater playbills and programs, 61 motion pictures, 10 sound recordings and 143 photographs and 29 memorabilia items documenting the life and career of Harry Houdini. Groups of theater posters and additional sound recordings will be added to this anthology in the future.
The Golden Age of Broadway
This collection uses primary sources to explore the golden age of musical theatre on Broadway. Digital Public Library of America Primary Source Sets are designed to help students develop their critical thinking skills and draw diverse material from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States. Each set includes an overview, ten to fifteen primary sources, links to related resources, and a teaching guide. These sets were created and reviewed by the teachers on the DPLA's Education Advisory Committee.
Playwriting
This book is a resource designed to help guide you through the essential components of a play and is designed to serve as a guide to helping you develop a process for your writing that has been proven over time to be successful. These lessons are garnered from many books, interviews, classes, and life lessons on playwriting and story development.
Wikisource: Ancient Greek Drama
An index of Ancient Greek drama on Wikisource

Library databases

Library research guides

ART 107-01 - 3 Dimensional Design
by SC4 Library Last Updated Oct 23, 2025 1 views this year
Graphic Design
by SC4 Library Last Updated Jul 11, 2024 35 views this year
Painting
by SC4 Library Last Updated Jul 11, 2024 20 views this year
Theatre
by Jane Lewandoski Last Updated Oct 23, 2025 109 views this year