Juneau Public Libraries 1 of 3

Guide to Finding Electronic Books Online

There are many sources of electronic texts on the Internet. Many offer access to copyright free books in the public domain, but a growing number also offer some contemporary original publishing. Digital libraries offer scanned images as well as digitized content of original books, papers, and historic documents. Subscription services, such as NetLibrary (available at the Juneau Public Libraries), offer check out access to electronic books as part of a librarys collection. Digital publishing does not replace books in paper, but it offers an important alternative. In its statement of purpose the English Server (below) says: In today's world of corporate publishing, value is placed on works that sell to broad markets. Quick turnover, high-visibility marketing campaigns for bestsellers, and corporate 'superstore' bookstores have all made it difficult for unique and older texts to be published. E-texts help to fill some of that publishing gap. We hope that you will enjoy using this guide to electronic texts online. We welcome suggestions for additions to the list.

The Big Three Free Access Sites:

Project Gutenberg http://promo.net/pg/
More than 3500 etexts available in ASCII text. Most arebooks in the public domain. (published pre-1923.) You won't find the latest bestsellers or modern computer books here. You will find the classic books from the start of this century and previous centuries, from authors like Shakespeare, Poe, Dante, as well as well-loved favorites like the Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the Tarzan and Mars books of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Alice's adventures in Wonderland as told by Lewis Carroll, and thousands of others.

The Internet Public Library Online Texts Collection http://www.ipl.org/reading/books/

The IPL Online Texts Collection contains over 16,000 titles that can be browsed by author, by title, or by Dewey Decimal Classification. They can also be searched by keyword.

Bibliomania http://www.bibliomania.com/
Free World Literature online with more than 800 Classic Texts; Study Guides, Author Biographies, Book Summaries and Reference Books; Classic Fiction, Drama, Poetry, Short Stories and "Well Red Magazine" for the best in Contemporary Writing; Study Guides to the most read books and Help for Teachers; Reference Books, Dictionaries, Quotations, Classic Nonfiction, Biographies and Religious texts.

Online Guides to Electronic Texts:

Books on the Internet A Guide from the University of Texas http://www.lib.utexas.edu/Libs/PCL/Etext.html
Very complete guide to sources for electronic texts online. Links to subscription services, such as NetLibrary and to many free services. Also links to online booksellers.

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Juneau Public Libraries 2 of 3 Esmerelda http://esmeralda.com/

A directory to sources of free books and publications online.

The Online Books Page http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/

A site from the University of Pennsylvania that is similar to that from the University of Texas.

Reference Works:
Bartleby.com http://www.bartleby.com/
Classic Fiction, Columbia Encyclopedia 6 th Ed., American Heritage Dictionary 4 th Ed., RogetsII Thesaurus, American Heritage Book of English usage, Simpsons Contemporary Qutations, Bartletts Familiar Quotations, King James bible, Oxford Shakespeare, Grays anatomy, Strunks Elements of Style, and World Factbook.

Literature, reference, and verse. You can search for phrases of poetry in several anthologies. Offers standard reference works online including the Harvard Classics and the Harvard Shelf of

Classics Online:
Alex Catalogue of Electronic Texts http://www.infomotions.com/alex/
The Alex Catalogue of Electronic Texts is a collection of public domain documents from American and English literature as well as Western philosophy. Classics in the public domain.

Bulfinch's Mythology http://www.bulfinch.org/

The standard work on mythologyGreek, Roman, Norse and others. Fully hyperlinked. Find the meaning of obscure terms and the pronunciation of names instantly.

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare http://www.chemicool.com/Shakespeare/

Another truly classic site. All of the plays and poems.

The Internet Classics Archive http://classics.mit.edu/

These are THE classicsthe Greek and Roman kind. They are all available here in one place, never checked out or missing, and also searchable.

Original Publishing on the Internet:

Books Published on the English Server http://eserver.org/books/
Publishes new works (30393 so far). Diverse literary collections and content. The EServer (founded in 1990 as the English Server) attempts to provide an alternative niche for quality work. We offer 42 collections on such diverse topics as contemporary art, race, Internet studies, sexuality, drama, design, multimedia, accessible publishing and current political and social issues. In addition to written works, we publish hypertext, audio and even video recordings. Our collections grow as we welcome new contributions, and as we teach new members how to publish works to the Web and to the million or so readers who visit our site per week.

InformIT Computer Books Online http://www.informit.com/

An online resource center that delivers premium IT content, access to industry experts, training courses, and news in key topic areas for techies of all skill levels. Free content, including Articles and complete online eBooks. Publishing partners include Addison-Wesley Professional, Cisco Press, New Riders, Peachpit, Prentice Hall Professional Technical Reference, Que, and Sams You must register to use, but it is free.

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Juneau Public Libraries 3 of 3 University of California E-Editions http://www.ucpress.edu/scan/

University of California Press now offers electronic versions of some of its journal titles and nearly sixty books online. This is current publishing from the University of California Press

Digital Libraries:
American Memory from the Library of Congress http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amhome.html
American Memory is a gateway to rich primary source materials relating to the history and culture of the United States. The site offers more than 7 million digital items from more than 100 historical collections.

Electronic Text Center -- University of Virginia http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/

5,000 texts publicly accessible covering history, literature, philosophy, religion, history of science , with collections in multiple languages, including Latin, Japanese, and Chinese. 1,600 Microsoft Reader and Palm Pilot ebooks publicly accessible -- all in English; some illustrated. 164,000 images publicly available, including rare books, manuscripts, and book illustrations .

Perseus Digital Library http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/

Perseus is an evolving digital library, engineering interactions through time, space, and language. Our primary goal is to bring a wide range of source materials to as large an audience as possible. We anticipate that greater accessibility to the sources for the study of the humanities will strengthen the quality of questions, lead to new avenues of research, and connect more people through the connection of ideas.

Digital Libraries Initiative http://www.dli2.nsf.gov/

More information on digital libraries with links to digital library projects.

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