openculture

Open Culture is a website that curates free cultural and educational media for lifelong learners. It aggregates and links to content from universities, museums, libraries, and cultural institutions, offering a wide range of media including online courses, audiobooks, eBooks, films, and language lessons. The site was founded by Dan Colman and launched in the mid-2000s as a resource to provide broad access to high-quality media.

The platform organizes its offerings into several categories, such as Free Online Courses, Free Audio Books, Free Movies, Language Lessons, and Textbooks and Ebooks. Much of the material linked on Open Culture comes from public-domain or freely licensed sources, and it often highlights content from institutions and projects known for open access, such as MIT OpenCourseWare, The Internet Archive, LibriVox, and Project Gutenberg, among others. By focusing on open or freely accessible media, Open Culture aims to support self-directed learning and cultural literacy beyond traditional paywalls.

As an aggregation site, Open Culture does not typically host the media it references but directs users to the original hosting platforms. This approach has made it a popular starting point for discovering free educational resources and culturally significant content across disciplines such as science, literature, film, and language learning. The site has contributed to the broader visibility of open-access and free-media initiatives, while readers are reminded that licensing and availability vary by item since content is hosted by third parties. Open Culture continues to publish updates and recommendations to help users locate freely accessible educational media.