OAPEN Library hosts new Big Ten Open Books collection on Indigenous North Americans
The Hague, 10 September 2025 OAPEN is pleased to announce continued support for Big Ten Open Books by hosting its latest collection in the OAPEN Library, making a new range of high-quality, open access books available to readers worldwide.
The collection, Indigenous North Americans, containing 100 previously published titles, explores indigenous history, culture, and literature, from the 15th century until today. Each title can be discovered, read online, or downloaded in full text without restrictions, ensuring that this important research is accessible to all.
Big Ten Open Books is a collaborative initiative of the Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA)’s Center for Library Programs, bringing together libraries and leading university presses to make scholarly works openly accessible. The project demonstrates BTAA’s commitment to advance open access information and meet robust accessibility standards. It also demonstrates OAPEN’s leading role in supporting and promoting community-led open access book publishing. The books will also be made discoverable through the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB), an indexing platform co-managed by OAPEN and OpenEdition.
The first Big Ten Open Books project was launched in 2023 as a collection of 100 open access books on Gender and Sexuality Studies, which is also hosted in the OAPEN Library.
Kate McCready, Program Director for Open Publishing at BTAA says, “OAPEN’s work to make open access materials discoverable throughout the world is invaluable to Big Ten Open Books’ goal of creating a sustainable program. We’ve seen tremendous usage of these books from people around the globe because of their inclusion in the OAPEN Library and Directory of Open Access Books.”
Niels Stern, Managing Director of OAPEN says, “We are delighted to continue our collaboration with BTAA supporting their mission of distributing curated collections of open books from high-quality university presses. This collection amplifies voices historically marginalised in academia and by making these works more discoverable, we aim to foster inclusive conversations and ensure diverse perspectives are represented in the scholarly record.”
The Big Ten Open Books collections can be accessed directly through the OAPEN Library at: https://library.oapen.org/browse?type=collection&value=Big+Ten+Open+Books.
About Big Ten Academic Alliance
The Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA) is the United States of America’s preeminent model for effective collaboration among research universities. For over half a century, these world-class institutions have advanced their academic missions, generated unique opportunities for students and faculty, and served the common good by sharing expertise, leveraging campus resources, and collaborating on innovative programs. Governed and funded by the provosts of the member universities, Big Ten Academic Alliance programs and initiatives are coordinated by a staff from its Champaign, Illinois headquarters. The nineteen world-class libraries of the Big Ten Academic Alliance members include Indiana University, Michigan State University, Northwestern University, Ohio State University, Pennsylvania State University, Purdue University, Rutgers University, University of California Los Angeles, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, University of Iowa, University of Maryland, University of Michigan, University of Minnesota, University of Nebraska–Lincoln, University of Oregon, University of Southern California, University of Washington, University of Wisconsin–Madison, and the University of Chicago.
About OAPEN and DOAB
OAPEN is an independent, not-for-profit foundation dedicated to peer-reviewed open access books, with its registered office in the National Library of The Netherlands in The Hague. OAPEN operates three platforms: the OAPEN Library, the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB, in partnership with OpenEdition), and the OAPEN Open Access Books Toolkit. OAPEN promotes and supports the global transition to open access for academic books by providing open infrastructure services to stakeholders in scholarly communication.
The Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) is a globally used, community-driven and open directory that indexes high quality peer-reviewed open access books. The primary mission of DOAB is to increase discoverability of open access books and increase trust in open access book publishing. All DOAB services are free of charge, and all data is freely available.
