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Text is an important resource format and often OER have begun with digitizing of text materials - textbooks, papers, etc.  While the digital allows creation multiple kinds of resources, text holds an important position in terms of content creation.  Textual OER includes text documents, [[wikipedia:Webpage|web pages]], [[wikipedia:PDF|PDF documents]], [[wikipedia:Spreadsheet|spreadsheets]] and other resources which are primarily text based.  Currently a large amount of textual OER is created using proprietary formats and made available in PDF formats. The PDF formats do not allow editing and limit any re-purposing. In addition, in the absence of licensed proprietary applications, these OER cannot be reused or modified. Using free and open source tools to create textual OER can allow more and more users to create content; this can also expand the universe of OER creation to languages other than English.

Text is an important resource format and often OER have begun with digitizing of text materials - textbooks, papers, etc.  While the digital allows creation multiple kinds of resources, text still holds an important position in terms of content creation.  Textual OER includes text documents, [[wikipedia:Webpage|web pages]], [[wikipedia:PDF|PDF documents]], [[wikipedia:Spreadsheet|spreadsheets]] and other resources which are primarily text based.  Currently a large amount of textual OER is created using proprietary formats and made available in [[wikipedia:Proprietary|proprietary]] or PDF formats. PDF formats do not easily enable editing and hence limit re-purposing. In addition, in the absence of licensed proprietary applications, these OER may not be able to be legally reused or modified. Using free and open source tools to create textual OER can allow more and more users to create content; this can also support the expansion of the universe of OER creation in languages other than English.

One important advantage of the digital tools is the possibility of creating different kinds of textual resources.  We are no longer thinking of linear typed text alone; it is now possible to create concept maps, flow charts, diagrams, combine text and images and create an infographic and so on. The hypertext which is what makes web pages possible are also another form of textual output.  In this chapter of the toolkit, we will look at how to access, create and re-purpose different textual OER; all the tools discussed here are concerned with text as the basic OER being created.           

One important advantage of the digital tools is the possibility of creating different kinds of textual resources.  We are no longer thinking of linear typed text alone; it is now possible to create concept maps, flow charts, diagrams, combine text and images and create an info-graphic and so on. The hypertext which makes web pages possible is also another form of text.  In this chapter of the toolkit, we will look at how to access, create and re-purpose textual OER; all the tools discussed are basically  text editing tools.           

=== Objectives ===

=== Objectives ===

In this chapter, you will learn  

In this chapter, you will learn  

# about popular repositories for accessing text OER

# about popular repositories for accessing text OER

# to download and create your personal digital library for organizing and reusing OER

# to access text OER and create your personal digital library for organizing your OER

# to access, create and re-purpose concept maps using concept map editor (''Freeplane'')

# to access, create and re-purpose concept maps using concept map editor (''Freeplane'')

# to access, create and re-purpose text resources using a text editor (''LibreOffice Writer'').

# to access, create and re-purpose text resources using a text editor (''LibreOffice Writer'').

=== Your personal digital library for OER ===

=== Your personal digital library for OER ===

As a part of using this tool-kit to learn FOSS tools and create OER, we will be accessing and creating many documents / files. It is necessary to organize these files carefully on our computer so that we can access them easily later.   You should now create a folder on your computer with the name of the topic you would like to create resources on; this can also have sub folders for ‘Text OER’, ‘Image OER’ and ‘Audio Video OER’ for saving your save your text, image, audio and video files respectively. By organizing your files and folders carefully on any topic, you are creating what can be termed as a ‘Personal Digital Library’ on that topic. Having personal digital libraries allows you to access and re-use OER easily and effectively.

As a part of using this tool-kit to learn FOSS tools and create OER, you will be accessing and creating many documents / files. It is necessary for you to organize these files carefully on your computer so that you can access them easily later. You should create a folder on your computer with the <name of the topic> that you would like to create OER on; this can have sub folders for ‘Text OER’, ‘Image OER’ and ‘Audio Video OER’ for saving your save your text, image, audio and video files respectively. By organizing your files and folders carefully on any topic, you are creating what can be termed as a ‘Personal Digital Library’ on that topic. Having personal digital libraries allows you to access and re-use OER easily and effectively. You could instead create sub folders for different sub-topics for your topic and save your files based on the sub topic. For instance, the topic 'energy' could serve as the name of your folder, within which you could create sub-folders for heat, light, magnetism, electricity etc. You should think about the way you would want to access your OER later, and create the sub-folders (and sub sub-folders) on basis of this hierarchy.   

In the last chapter on ‘Publishing OER’, we will explain how you can upload these resources on the world wide web, which can be considered as the ‘Global Digital Library’ accessible to anyone with connectivity.

In the last chapter on ‘Publishing OER’, we will explain how you can upload these resources on the world wide web, which can be considered as the ‘Global Digital Library’ accessible to anyone with connectivity.  

=== Accessing text OER repositories ===

=== Accessing text OER repositories ===