Good Sources for Online Books

By Librarian Carl

The printed word has undergone a multitude of changes over its history, from papyrus scrolls and wax tablets to parchment manuscripts and paper bound books. The latest format is eBooks. Electronic Books (or eBooks) are digital versions of a traditional print book designed to be read on a personal computer or an e-book reader. Large collections of ebooks are sometimes presented by way of online digital libraries. Although eBooks have been around since the early 1980s, they did not hit the public eye until early 2000.

Many complications over standard format file types, delivery systems, and legal policies are currently plaguing the industry. The field of digital books is constantly growing and changing; thankfully, many easy and free-to-use options exist. This month’s Good Sources column will point you in the right direction.

1) Libraries

Reading Public Library
The Reading Public Library offers a whole host of databases and indexes free to all library members (databases link here and here). One such database is NetLibrary, which offers digital version of books, journals, and other database content.
Link: NetLibrary

Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LC) has both unique eText collections and offers access to a list of databases which
Databases: Databases & E-Resources (Free) (All)
Other Online content: Digital Collections & Services

New York Public Library
Like the LC the NYPL has both their own collection of digital content and offer access to a list of databases.
Databases: Databases and Indexes Online (Free) (All)
Other Online content: Digital Collections

Internet Public Library
IPL offers a list of remote links to various online eBooks and eText.
Online Text Links: http://www.ipl.org/div/subject/browse/hum60.60.00/


2) Other Sources

Project Gutenberg
“Project Gutenberg is the first and largest single collection of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.”

Internet Archive
“The Internet Archive is a 501(c)(3) non-profit that was founded to build an Internet library, with the purpose of offering permanent access for researchers, historians, and scholars to historical collections that exist in digital format. Founded in 1996 and located in the Presidio of San Francisco, the Archive has been receiving data donations from Alexa Internet and others.”

The Online Books Page
“The Online Books Page is an index of e-text books available on the Internet. It is edited by John Mark Ockerbloom and is hosted by the library of the University of Pennsylvania. The Online Books Page lists over 30,000 books, and has several features, such as A Celebration of Women Writers and Banned Books Online.”

Bartleby.com
“Bartleby.com is an electronic text archive, headquartered in New York and named after Herman Melville's Bartleby the Scrivener. It was founded under the name "Project Bartleby" in January 1993 by Steven H. van Leeuwen as a personal, non-profit collection of classic literature on the website of Columbia University.”

The Internet Classics Archive
“Select from a list of 441 works of classical literature by 59 different authors, including user-driven commentary and "reader's choice" Web sites. Mainly Greco-Roman works (some Chinese and Persian), all in English translation.”

Open Library
“Open Library a project designed to create a comprehensive online database of books. It is a project of the Internet Archive. Aaron Swartz is the leader of the Open Library's technical team.”

Google Books
“Google Book Search is a tool from Google that searches the full text of books that Google scans, converts to text using optical character recognition, and stores in its digital database.”

Digital Book Index
“Digital Book Index provides links to more than 145,000 full-text digital books from more than 1800 commercial and non-commercial publishers, universities, and various private sites. More than 100,000 of these books, texts, and documents are available free, while many others are available at very modest cost.”

The Universal Digital Library
“The Million Book Project (or the Universal Library), led by Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science and University Libraries currently has scanned ove 1 million books. Working with government and research partners in India and China, the project is scanning books in many languages, using OCR to enable full text searching, and providing free-to-read access to the books on the web.”

BONUS: CliffNotes
The well known student study guides are now available online and for free!


3) Searching On Your Own

There are many more options for online full text. The above list should get you started with the major general offerings. You can use the following keywords to help you search out various other collections.

Keywords: eBooks, eText, Online Full Text, eContent
Keywords: Digital Library, Electronic Library, Online Library