What Is LibreTexts and What Does It Offer?

Updated

LibreTexts is a non-profit open education resource (OER) platform that educators use to create, customize, and share accessible, interactive textbooks, adaptive homework, and ancillary materials. It is most useful if you are an instructor or institution looking for openly licensed course content you can remix, or a student whose course already uses LibreTexts materials. The platform describes itself as "10 times the power at a fraction of the cost" and reports 500+ schools and organizations, 75M+ in student savings, 3,000+ textbooks, 300K+ homework questions, and 1,500K+ pages of OER content.

Who runs it and who it's for

LibreTexts is a non-profit platform that collaborates with individuals and organizations to support open education initiatives, institutional publishing programs, and curriculum development projects. Its stated audience is educators who need to build or adapt course materials, plus the students and institutions that use them.

The four service areas

LibreTexts organizes its work into four areas:

Area What it covers
Content Build, integrate, maintain, and distribute OER textbooks, homework, and ancillaries from "Curatatories" — centralized repositories for creation, remixing, and discovery
Technology Develop and sustain the "LibreVerse," an ecosystem of interconnected open-source technologies
Development Help the community launch new projects through content creation and technology development
Training Professional development that equips the community to use the LibreVerse

What you can actually use

Textbook libraries

  • 17 subject field libraries
  • Over 2,000 textbooks for various courses
  • Ability to remix chapters from different textbooks plus your own material into a custom textbook
  • Case studies, lab experiments, and interactive modules

Homework and assessment (ADAPT)

ADAPT is LibreTexts' homework system. You can create adaptive assessments from a shared question bank of over 240,000 openly licensed elements. It combines pre-built, high-quality assessments with personalized learning models and customization options so content aligns with your curriculum. New question and activity types are continually being developed.

Interactive learning materials

You can embed Jupyter Notebooks, ADAPT homework questions, 3D visualizations, videos, and more directly into a textbook.

How to decide whether to use it

  • If you're an instructor who wants to adopt or remix open textbooks and build adaptive homework without starting from scratch, the combination of 17 libraries, 2,000+ textbooks, and the ADAPT question bank is the main draw.
  • If you're an institution running an open education or publishing program, the Content, Development, and Training services are aimed at supporting that launch.
  • If you're a student, check whether your course already assigns LibreTexts materials; the platform's reported student savings figure reflects institutional adoption rather than individual sign-up.

The site also runs a monthly webinar series and publishes blogs, which are reasonable starting points if you want to see how others use the platform before committing.