Textbooks are expensive, including image-heavy science textbooks and lab manuals like those for intro geology courses. Open Educational Resources (OERs) are known to increase financial and educational equity in college classrooms, especially for underrepresented or marginalized groups of students who may feel greater motivation to stay in a course and succeed if they can get (free) course materials from day one of a course. Many OERs are available for introductory STEM subjects like Geology, with various open access designations. The author found an introductory geology textbook and lab manual with CC BY designations that allow for copying, redistribution, remixing, and building upon the original work with credit to the original author. The presenter proceeded to modify, update, include paragraphs about local geology and images related to USI geology field trips to make the concepts more related to future USI geology students. These modified materials were used in GEOL 161: Introductory Geology at USI in online sections Fall 2023 and Summer 2024, and in-person sections in Spring 2024 and Fall 2024, and were added to USI’s Scholarly Open Access Repository (SOAR). Thirty lab kits including fifteen mineral and thirty rock samples along with testing materials were created and put together with the help of a student worker and cataloged at Rice Library so that online learning students can borrow them at no cost. Educator challenges, observations, and experiences, as well as best practices and future work will be discussed.