Some time ago, I signed up for daily email updates from Open Culture, fully intending to take advantage of this wonderful resource. Every morning, as I sift through email, I find interesting features in my inbox.  Sometimes something will catch my eye and I’ll immediately forward the email on to a teacher who I know will be interested in that particular topic. More often than not, I simply drag the email into a folder so I can read it later. Later hasn’t come yet. While I know that Open Culture is an amazing collection of books, movies, and resources, all in the public domain, I have found it somewhat intimidating to search and navigate. So before school starts up again in full swing after the break, I’m going to sit down and make friends with Open Culture. I have a teacher who is going to kick off the new year with Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front and would like resources on World War I. When I type this topic into the search field and hit “Search,” another window opens in my browser and it’s a “Google Custom Search.” The first four results are Google Ads, exhorting me to “Download Now!” and “100% Free!”  Not really what I had in mind. But below the ads is the meat I’m looking for. The first non-ad result is “British Actors Read Poignant Poetry from World War I.” Now we’re in business. There’s a video and a thoroughly written explanation of the video’s content. First up, we see Sean Bean performing “Anthem for Doomed Youth.” Students will recognize Bean from his role as Boromir in The Fellowship of the Ring movie and as the doomed Ned Stark in HBO’s Game of Thrones. Oh, and he is good. Bingo! Back in the search results, the second link leads me to “World War I Remembered in Second Life”—a Second Life video narrated with poetry, archival interviews, and factual and statistical information about trench warfare and battle lines. Another Bingo! On this page, I also find a link titled “remarkable poetry,” which leads me to the Modern History SourceBook with full texts of WWI poems. The third link in my search results is for a World War II video. The fourth link is to “The BBC’s Horrible Histories Videos: Frightful First World War – Causes of WWI.”  Oops! You can’t win ‘em all. This is a rather ridiculous little video which endeavors to explain the complex reasons for the outbreak of war in 1914. This might serve as a light and fun introduction to the unit. There are more links—in fact, they seem to go on endlessly. There’s a link to John McCutcheon’s song, "Christmas in the Trenches", and another to an interview with Frank Woodruff Buckles, the last living U.S. WWI veteran, who died February 27^th, 2011, at the age of 110. The biggest hurdle with making friends with Open Culture might very well be that there’s just so much material available. It takes time to sift through what’s there and cobble together pieces most relevant to my topic. But that really is the point, too. It’s a wealth of free and easy access to literature, history, music, ebooks, online courses, movies, and language instruction. Dive in and try using Open Culture as an alternative to Google when seeking instructional materials.