"Open-access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. What makes it possible is the internet and the consent of the author or copyright-holder." - From Peter Suber, A Very Brief Introduction to Open Access
The Budapest Open Access Initiative describes "open access" as "permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited."
When building a course or selecting learning activities, search for resources at the Union College Library website. Articles from databases, primary sources from databases, chapters from e-books, and film clips are available for embedding in any Canvas course shell.