Best free Digital Libraries - Australia

New Best free Digital Libraries - New Zealand

Best free Digital Libraries - World

Other Free Australian Books

Other Free Book Sites/Pages in English

World - Other Languages, Regional and National

Individual Topics/Miscellaneous

Sacred Texts & Religion

Best free Digital Libraries - Australia

Adelaide University Electronic Texts Collection This growing collection of e-texts - currently more than 700 - includes classic works of Literature, Philosophy, Science, and Medicine. Their own web editions, in HTML. http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/

ANU E-Print Repository From the Australian National University in Canberra, ACT (Australian Capital Territory). Holding over 2,460 items as of May 2005. Material from 1987 on is included. User registration (there is no charge) is required for some parts of the site. Switching to a dspace server later in the year.
http://eprints.anu.edu.au/

Australian e-Humanities Gateway is an initiative of the Australian e-Humanities Network, a group funded by the Australian Research Council.The network includes representatives from the Australian Academy of the Humanities, the University of Sydney and the University of Newcastle. A portal for digital resources in humanities disciplines in Australia.
http://www.ehum.edu.au/

New Cochrane Library Contains helpful, authoritative information on the effectiveness of different health care treatments and interventions. This scientific medical site has limited free access for Australians through a national subscription, and may be readily accessed by anyone surfing the Web from the 'au" domain. A good place to start your research.
http://www.nicsl.com.au/cochrane/index.asp

Curtin University of Technology Institutional Repository espace@Curtin provides access to research produced by Curtin University of Technology staff and postgraduate students. Around 260 items were available as at May 2005 covering material from 1980 onwards.
http://espace.lis.curtin.edu.au/

eprints unimelb The embryonic University of Melbourne eprint collection. The oldest item dates back to 1945. In order to access some areas of the archive, you'll need a user registration (no charge).
http://eprints.unimelb.edu.au/

eprints @UQ The University of Queensland's digital repository. Set up in 2002, it covers material created since 1983, although most dates from 1998 on. Includes e-books, e-chapters, online journals, various articles, working papers, conference papers and proceedings, posters, miscellaneous research output, and pre-publication (draft) material. OAI-compliant, the repository includes research output of UQ academic staff and postgraduate students, both before and after peer-reviewed publication. Formats used are HTML, ASCII text, PDF & Postscript.
http://eprint.uq.edu.au/

Monash University ePrint Repository The Monash University ePrint Repository showcases and archives quality research output of Monash University staff. As of May 2005 it held 122 e-prints covering the period 1996-2004.
http://eprint.monash.edu.au/

OZLIT Electronic Texts
Not a library as such, rather an Australian portal to an array of free e-book resources. Includes a limited number of Australian e-texts. Courtesy of the leading state portal VicNet.
http://home.vicnet.net.au/~ozlit/chapt4.html

Project Gutenberg of Australia produces books in electronic form and makes them freely available to the public in accordance with Australian copyright law. NB: Under Australian copyright law, literary, dramatic, & musical work published, performed, communicated, or recorded and offered for sale in an author's lifetime are protected for the life of the author plus fifty years from the end of the year of the author's death. After this time they enter into the public domain. Some e-books available here may still be under copyright in the United States (where local laws have several times extended copyright to levels not accepted within Australian jurisdiction). Such works are therefore not available from the US site of Project Gutenberg.
http://gutenberg.net.au//

QUT ePrints An institutional archive of research papers produced at Queensland University of Technology by QUT staff and postgraduate students. Items now deposited span from 1984 to date, and this fast-growing new collection already offers over a thousand of them.Since 2004 it has been QUT policy that publicly available research and scholarly output of the University should be deposited here.
http://eprints.qut.edu.au/

SETIS (The Scholarly Electronic Text and Image Service at the University of Sydney Library) Regarded as the leading University digital collection in Australia. Plans are under way to further enlarge the size & scope of SETIS. Includes also the University of Sydney digital theses collection (currently around two hundred theses available).
NB: While you may access many texts from the Web, a large number are commercially licensed and available only to users at the University of Sydney.
http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au//

UTasER The University of Tasmania ePrint Repository. Research materials covering as far back as 1968 have now been deposited here. By May 2005 there were 126 of them.
http://eprints.comp.utas.edu.au:81/

Back

NewBest free Digital Libraries - NZ

Early New Zealand Books . Works about traditional Maori society and culture and the earliest British settlements. In chapters online, includes enlargeable images. Please note conditions of use. Provided by the University of Auckland.
http://www.enzb.auckland.ac.nz/

New Zealand Digital Library Collections available include historical documents, humanitarian and development information, computer science technical reports and bibliographies, literary works, and magazines. A project of the University of Waikato, variously in HTML and PDF.
http://www.nzdl.org/cgi-bin/library

New Zealand Electronic Text Centre Online archive of New Zealand and Pacific Islands texts and heritage materials - full-text books, manuscripts and journals, plus images. You may download and print text and images for your own personal and non-commercial use only. XML-based; a variety of formats may be available.
http://www.nzetc.org/

Best free Digital Libraries - World

***** Project Gutenberg Project Gutenberg is the original free digital library of books no longer in
copyright. So you'll find a great many classic literary texts here. The full Gutenberg collection now exceeds 5,000 books. The whole collection represents a monumental effort in unpaid, unselfish, labour since 1971.

The Project Gutenberg philosophy is to make information, books and other materials available to the general public in forms a vast majority of computers, programs and people can easily read, use, quote, and search.
Their books are usually in plain text (ASCII) format. However to improve the online reading experience you can also use other reader software (check out our Software Page).
http://www.gutenberg.net/

Alex Catalogue of Electronic Texts is a collection of public domain documents from American and English literature as well as Western philosophy. You can search for and display texts from the collection & also search their content, & even create on-the-fly PDFs for offline reading or printing.
http://www.infomotions.com/alex

arXiv e-Prints Includes e-Print "preprints" in physics, mathematics, nonlinear sciences, and computer sciences. From Cornell University with assistance from the National Science Foundation (USA), the National Institute for Theoretical Physics (USA) and the University of Adelaide (Australia). Formats include PDF, PostScript, and DVI. http://www.arxiv.org/
NB: There are mirror sites in Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, UK, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Russia, Spain, Taiwan, & USA.

Athena Thousands of mainly French and Swiss-authored e-texts, across a broad range of especially Literature, Science & the Arts. In .html &. rtf versions. Also many links to famous works in German, Dutch & English too. Prepared or linked for the Web by the University of Geneva. Expand your mind & education here.
http://un2sg4.unige.ch/athena/html/athome.html

Bartleby.com The Encyclopedia of World History and The Harvard Classics are among many free texts offered at this award-winning site. Many classic reference works are available here.
http://www.bartleby.com/index.html

Bibliomania Offers more than 2,000 free classic texts, plus research works. In HTML format, readable by your web browser.
http://www.bibliomania.com/

Bibliotheca Augustana A Latin e-library. Includes Bibliothecae Latina, Graeca, Germanica, Anglica, Gallica, Italica, Hispanica, Polonica et Russica. "Collectio textuum electronicorum. AppleMac et Netscape his paginis optimum visum dant. Ave Gatem et Exploratorem! " (Optimised for Netscape).
http://www.fh-augsburg.de/~harsch/a_index.html

CELT (Corpus of Electronic Texts). Irish literary, historical & cultural texts, in Irish, Latin, Anglo-Norman French, and English. Presented in HTML, with a searchable online database. An initiative of University College, Cork, Republic of Ireland.
http://www.ucc.ie/celt

CogPrints Cognitive Sciences Eprint* Archive - Includes a wide variety of papers in psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, philosophy, biology, medicine, anthropology and computer science. Material dates back as far as 1950, although most of it dates since 1990. Some areas of the archive require registration, to obtain a username and password. *Eprints here are defined as the digital texts of peer-reviewed research articles, before and after refereeing. Before refereeing and publication, the draft is called a "preprint." The refereed, published final draft is called a "postprint." Eprints may include both preprints and postprints, as well as any significant drafts in between, and any post publication updates.
http://cogprints.soton.ac.uk/

Complete Works of William Shakespeare but minus his poetry at present. The plays can be read either as a continuous text or by individual scenes. For reading online, in HTML.
http://the-tech.mit.edu/Shakespeare/works.html

The Digital Library of the Commons (DLC) An archive of international literature on "the commons" (i.e. that which is held in common or by a community). Many useful features for both readers and contributing authors. A full-text Digital Library, a Working Paper Archive of author-submitted papers, and links to relevant references are included. Thanks to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the International Association for the Study of Common Property (IASCP) & the Indiana University Graduate School. As Adobe PDF files.
http://dlc.dlib.indiana.edu/

Digital Library for Earth System Education: DLESE Over 5,000 searchable educational resources. Items are also organized into themes or collections, broadly as environmental, geographical, geological, oceanographical and other physical sciences; space science and technology; policy and educational issues and the philosophy of science. Resources are not archived on site but in a variety of collaborating collections. Funded by the National Science Foundation (USA).
http://www.dlese.org/dds/index.jsp

Digital Library of Information Science and Technology: dLIST A repository of electronic resources in Library and Information Science (LIS) and Information Technology (IT). Contains published and unpublished papers, data sets instructional and help materials, pathfinder , reports & bibliographies. So far in English only. User registration required to access some areas. In HTML or PDF.
http://dlist.sir.arizona.edu/

Ebooks Online Library Around a dozen authors ranging from Aesop to Sun Tzu, with huge representation of Charles Dickens & Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, plus a goodly measure of Jules Verne & Mark Twain. In very clear HTML for online reading, this collection has been sourced from Project Gutenberg and prepared with special attention to the needs for visually impaired and older readers. You can set the font size & colour, or background colour, with just a click in the Settings panel. http://www.readeasily.com/

Elfwood Elfwood is a huge, non-profit home to amateur Fantasy/Sci-Fi literature and art, plus some How -To Guides. The site holds over twenty thousand works of art & literature by over fifteen hundred Science Fiction/Fantasy artists and writers.
http://elfwood.lysator.liu.se/

The E Server Bit of a mind flip might be an exaggeration, but there is certainly nothing stodgy about this large & contemporary collection of online intellectual texts & resources. Based at the University of Washington.
http://eserver.org/

Electronic Text Collections in Western European Literature Links site for literary texts in Western European languages other than English. Languages include Catalan, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Irish, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish & Swedish.
http://www.lib.virginia.edu/wess/etexts.html

Electronic Texts On The Internet A useful links page with over eighty entries.
http://www.refdesk.com/factelec.html

EuroDocs Primary historical documents from Western Europe. Selected Transcriptions, Facsimiles and Translations.
http://library.byu.edu/~rdh/eurodocs

Great Books Index From Aeschylus to Virginia Woolf - links to online works, in English translation, by more than 130 classic authors. Please check for any copyright restrictions (which may in a few cases apply for other than reading online). A redoubtable effort from Ken Roberts of Ontario, Canada. http://books.mirror.org/gb.home.html

Great Books and Classics Provides free HTML online versions of many famous authors from before 200 BC to the 20th Century. Linked with Amazon.com for commercial print offerings of the titles.
http://www.grtbooks.com/

Internet Classics Archive More than 440 mainly Greco-Roman texts, with some Chinese and Persian. By 59 different authors. In English translation. For online reading, some downloads available.
http://classics.mit.edu/

Internet Public Library Over 20,000 free books available online. The Internet Public Library's Mission Statement says: " The Internet Public Library (IPL), is a public service organization and learning/teaching environment at the University of Michigan School of Information. The IPL Online Texts Collection contains over 20,000 titles that can be browsed by author, by title, or by Dewey Decimal Classification". For questions about the online texts collection, or how to search, please see their help page.
http://www.ipl.org/reading/books

New Kurt Stьber's Online Library - historic and modern biology books Large library of books on biological subjects, many currently out of print and hard to obtain. Mostly German authors, but luminaries such as Charles Darwin are also present. In German, with some English and French (a few works are old enough to be in Latin). Online in text chapters or as individual scanned pages. Browse the collection by author, title, category or publication date.
http://www.zum.de/stueber/

MIT OpenCourseWare The first stage of an ambitious & generous plan to make all Massachusetts Institute of Technology course materials available on the Internet, for free download. Materials for 500 courses have been accessible since the end of September 2003. Materials are in English, but a number are also available in Spanish & Portuguese. Presented in HTML. However courses may include Adobe Acrobat PDF files, Java Applets, Shockwave, Real Player, Java, and MATLAB files (software for all of these may be downloaded from the site's Technical Requirements page). This so far unique gift is made possible by MIT with support from the William and Flora Hewlett & Andrew W. Mellon Foundations.
http://ocw.mit.edu/index.html
Course list at http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Global/all-courses.htm

National Academy Press Read over 2,500 National Academy science, engineering, and health texts free online. You can also purchase print copies if you wish. These e-books represent the cream of U.S. research & policy opinion in these fields. Texts are presented in a fully-searchable "Open Book" format, which also allows for page browsing & internal links. Open Book" is HTML, & moreover the format is prepared so that you can send people an individual page reference as an URL. PDFs are also available. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences provides this site.
http://www.nap.edu/

Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD) Links to digital theses/dissertations available in Australia, Canada, many European nations, Hong Kong, Taiwan & the USA.
http://www.ndltd.org/

Online Books Page This University of Pennsylvania site offers access to more than 16,000 books online.
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books

Online Medieval and Classical Library From The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle to Yvain, or The Knight With the Lion, & including such works as: The Lay of the Cid, The Song of Roland, the Nibelungenlied, Orlando Furioso, the High History of the Holy Graal, many Icelandic sagas, some Chaucer & much else besides. In HTML for reading online, or download in PKZIP v.2.04g compressed format. Thanks to Douglas B. Killings, Sun Systems & the University of California at Berkeley.
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/

Oxford Text Archive From Oxford University, this archive was founded in 1976. High-quality, well-documented electronic texts for research and teaching. More than 2,500 resources in over 25 different languages. A premium academic resource. Public domain texts are freely available from the on-line catalogue and may be downloaded in a number of different formats. Some texts require the user to obtain the written permission of the original depositor.
http://ota.ahds.ac.uk/

Pennsylvania State University Electronic Classics Site: " The Labyrinth" PSU's e-books are presented as .pdf files (Adobe's Portable Document Format). Read them with the Adobe Acrobat Reader. Established in 1997, the site offers many classical works of literature in English, plus original works published by Penn. State Uni.
http://www2.hn.psu.edu/faculty/jmanis/jimspdf.htm

Perseus Project A great classical digital library site, with Greek & Latin texts, commentaries, an atlas, coin images, art, archaeology and more.
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/

Project Libellus The University of Washington, Seattle, provides this library of Latin texts, readable in your web browser. In HTML & TeX (a subset of ASCII). Thirteen classical Latin authors represented.
http://www.hhhh.org/perseant/libellus

Project Madurai Tamil Digital Library under preparation by voluntary effort. So far 160 works in Tamil script are available, in TSCII (Tamil Script Code for Information Interchange) format. Old Tamil classic works predominate so far.
http://www.tamil.net/projectmadurai/

Project Runeberg Project Runeberg publishes free electronic editions of old Nordic literature on the Internet. Since 1992. More than 200 titles, mostly in Swedish.
http://www.lysator.liu.se/runeberg

SAIL-eprints Find scientific or technical documents, published or unpublished, in Chemistry, Physics, Engineering, Materials Sciences, Nanotechnologies, Microelectronics, Computer Sciences, Astronomy, Astrophysics, Earth Sciences, Meteorology, Oceanography Agriculture and related application activities. SAIL enables searching over 70 institutional open access archives around the world. NB: Downloading of e-documents is possible only if it is permitted on the original archive. http://eprints.bo.cnr.it/

Soil And Health Library Free public library offering books on holistic agriculture, holistic health, self-sufficient living, and personal development.
http://www.soilandhealth.org/

Universal Library (under development) "The principal benefit of the Universal Library will be to supplement the formal education system by making knowledge available to anyone who can read and has access." A project of Carnegie Mellon University & the governments of China & India - much of the scanning will be done in the latter two countries. The million books project will have considerable content in many Indian and Chinese languages, as well as English. For more information about this far-reaching initiative see:
http://www.ul.cs.cmu.edu/

University of Virginia Electronic Text Center has more than 10,000 publicly accessible texts in thirteen languages (& over 164,000 publicly available images). These texts are available to web browsers, but in addition there are 2,000 + e-books available (in English) for MS Reader & Palm Reader.
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/

Virtual Library "The Virtual Library is the oldest catalog of the web, started by Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of html and the Web itself. Unlike commercial catalogs, it is run by a loose confederation of volunteers, who compile pages of key links for particular areas in which they are expert…" Fourteen primary categories to check out, or use the search engine.
http://www.vlib.org//

World eBook Library Opportunities to read or download thousands of HTML books online. Provides free, unlimited public access to a comprehensive collection of public domain texts & references, and links to thousand of on-line libraries around the world via the World Wide Web and/or Telnet. For a small annual fee, also offers access to over 60,000 PDF e-books and e-documents, plus 7,000 mp3 audio books. From the World Electronic Text Library Foundation, based in Honolulu, Hawaii.
http://netlibrary.net/WorldHome.html

Top

Other Free Australian Books

Australian Institute of Marine Science Reference library This collection may be read in either HTML and/or PDF.
http://www.aims.gov.au/pages/reflib/reflib-00.html

Desert Wave Publishing Based in the Alice (Alice Springs, Northern Territory of Australia for our overseas readers). Provides a number of free PDF e-books in areas such as job search, training, online learning, how to e-publish yourself.
http://www.dwave.com.au/

New Dictionary of Sydney Take a look at the first outline stage of this ambitious project (reader contributions welcome). There'll be stories about every suburb from Abbotsford to Zetland (not to forget spelling challenges like Woolloomooloo). Sydney's geography, history, and politics, architecture, biographies, great achievements and disasters, urban myths, wildlife both animal and human, humour, sport, crime - every aspect of the leading harbourside city of our Great Southern Land will hopefully be presented as the dictionary grows. A joint project of the University of Sydney and the City of Sydney Council, funded by a five year Australian Research Council grant. Take a look now at:
http://www.dictionaryofsydney.org/

Home Finance
Free First Home Buyers Guide, from a financial services company. This e-book stresses the need for financial prudence in home purchase and points to some pitfalls. Available as an .exe file download for reading offline. Warning: may conflict with some security settings. "Exercise caution in your business affairs…" the Desiderata. That goes for home loans too.
http://www.rpi.com.au/

New Finance and Property Guide
A free Australian book about finance and home buying and what to look for in Australian property purchases, by Padraic McCrudden. This book is prepared as an .exe file, which will download from the Web. To read, save the file to your computer and run it (start it) while online.
http://www.rpi.com.au/fpg.htm/

Marcus Clark A variety of free e-books are available here for downloading. They include political thriller fiction, short stories and several works for young people, all from the site author, who is an Aussie. There are also a number of traditional classic works. Variously as PDF files, HTML or plain text. Some exe files, some files are zipped.
http://www.marcus-clark.com/free-stuff1.html

Top

Other Free Books in English

Abacci Books This unusual site makes Project Gutenberg free e-book classics available for download together with reviews of those books from Amazon.com. Includes links to buy a hard copy if desired. Access books by author, title, category or most popular.
http://www.abacci.com/books/default.asp

Abacci eBooks Over a thousand free e-books for the Pocket PC & the PC (LIT files formatted for Microsoft Reader). Includes Amazon.com reviews. A selection of both classic & lesser-known works, thanks to site owner Peter Shanks, who personally formatted many.
http://www.abacci.com/msreader/default.aspx

Alive & Free A page of links to some recent books from living authors available free on-line. Warning: many controversial authors & titles here.
http://www.c3f.com/alivfree.html

New Ask Sam ebooks Free searchable e-books. Some classic literature, US Govt reports, legislative, legal, judicial & political documents. NB: Requires registration & downloading the free askSam viewer software to use. Check file size before downloading e-books, as some can be very large. http://www.asksam.com/ebooks/

Baen Free Library Commercial bookstore offers free e-books in HTML Ms Reader, Palm, Rocket & RTF formats. Registration requested.
http://www.baen.com/library

Black Mask With a goodly range of free e-books, this site also endears by offering six e-book formats and a special Australian section.
http://www.blackmask.com/page.php?do=page

Bookrags have 1,500 classic titles available, for Palm or other handheld devices.
http://www.bookrags.com/ebooks.html

Dr Jack Cross's Electronic Archive A collection of Dr Jack Cross's writings, plus major historical works deposited with the Bodleian Library. Many are PDFs. Under "Fragments of our Lives: Primary Sources" includes many of the seminal historical source documents of the modern Western world, from Homer's The Odyssey and The Iliad, & The History of Herodotus toThe Anglo Saxon Chronicle and key works by Dante, Milton, Goethe, Darwin and many more.
http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/djp/cross/

Ebooks4free Links to" free e-books and manuscripts, historical documents & literature, religion & magik, audio readings and much more.." Multilingual site - languages include English, Italian, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Sanskrit, Hebrew, Latin. The inner search engine actually translates into three languages: English Italian and (surprisingly!) Latin. In plain text, RTF, HTML, downloadable as.zip files, or as PDFs.
http://www.ebooks4free.net/

Elegant Solutions Software Company have a great free e- book site, with books downloadable to your PC: Motto:" Ebooks for people who think". Don't forget to check out Kate's page or the children's page there, for wonderful classic tales for young & old.
http://esspc-ebooks.com/default.htm

FlipBooks Books prepared to be read in the FlipViewer (see Software Page). A highly visual format especially suitable for displaying albums of images etc.
http://www.fliplibrary.com/

Franklin Free Library Thousands of free titles in text and HTML file formats. Some titles are also available for purchase as Franklin Reader formatted e-books.
http://www.franklin.com/freelibrary

Free Novels Online and Free Online Cyberbooks Nearly fifty new novels ranging over many genres, including SF/Fantasy, mystery, romance, humour and lots more. A gift from new authors seeking your attention. Either as HTML or as downloadable files.
http://www.starry.com/free-online-novels/index.htm

Indefinet.com This site features a select list of specialised websites related to online e-books. Some are free sites, others offer books for sale.
http://www.indefinet.com/Litonlineebooks.htm

New In Fact Book Search A site with a difference, enabling you to access topics within books (e.g. people, places, organisations) from over14,000 free and downloadable Project Gutenberg online books. In plain text format. With each search you'll also gain leads to related content.
http://books.infact.com/

Literature @ SunSITE Collection of digital literary texts from famous, mostly U.S.authors. May be read online, printed, or downloaded for further study.
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Literature/

Litrix Reading Room Features works of literature in English, including classics, mystery, horror, sci-fi, westerns, Sherlock Holmes, Americana. In HTML. For reading online, or save each chapter to read offline in your web browser. Thanks to novelist Stan Jones of Anchorage, Alaska.
http://www.litrix.com/authors.htm

Lysator Free e-books Lysator is a lively academic computer society & major e-publishing stalwart located at Linkцping University in Sweden. Here are a few miscellaneous e-texts they offer.
http://www.lysator.liu.se/

manybooks.net Free PDA e-books. Many thousands of public domain e-books from Project Gutenberg and elsewhere. They're available here either to read online in plain text or formatted to download for the Adobe Reader, Palm eReader, Palm Doc, iSilo, Rocketbook and other r-reader softwares.
http://manybooks.net/

Mary Jo's E-texts for the Palm Her selections include the Oz Books, a number of classics in literature, & various fan fiction. All files are zipped for easy downloading.
http://www.dogpatch.org/etext.html

Memoware have lots of free documents in a multiplicity of categories and a variety of formats for Palms & other PDAs. Award-winning site.
http://www.memoware.com/

MS (Microsoft) Reader (.lit) e- books: Over 1,500 available. You may search the listings by "author", "title" & "most popular" headings.
http://www.mslit.com/default.asp?mjr=FRE

PalmPilot E-Text Ring 80+ sites featuring free or for-purchase texts formatted for Palm readers.
http://www.pda-archives.com/pilot/10.htm

PDA Librarian Jill Thompson of Greencastle-Antrim High School in Pennsylvania's site. Jill offers small but carefully-chosen selections in the following categories: Outstanding Books for the College Bound; Best Novels Written in the English Language; Downloads Available by Author; Great Books For Teens; Political Documents. Also Educational Uses For PDAs, plus other helpful information.
http://user.pa.net/~thompson/

Phoenix Library Based on the Rocket eBook, but now offering titles in several languages & a wide range of formats (Adobe, Microsoft, MobiPocket & Franklin in addition to the Rocket/ REB reader editions).
http://www.phoenix-library.org/

Planet PDF Free eBooks area Recent asset for popular classic novels in the PDF format.
http://www.planetpdf.com/mainpage.asp?webpageid=2311

New PocketPC Books More than forty free e- books (mostly popular classics) in over a dozen genres, prepared for the PocketPC in Microsoft Reader (.lit format). These editions are under a creative commons licence, so they can also be copied or given away freely (unaltered and for non-commercial purposes). The site has on-page translation available in six European languages. http://www.pocketpcbooks.net/

Qvadis Library offers nearly 6,000 e-text titles in 32 categories, all free. All formatted for Palm OS devices.
http://www.qvadis.com/exlibris/ebooks.html#library

Read Print A great selection of free classic novels, stories, plays and non-fiction available online from over ninety authors. Browse the author list for your favourites.
http://www.readprint.com/

Scorpius Digital Publishing have many free e-books available at: http://scorpiusdigital.com/freebooks/index.html Only in Microsoft Reader however.

StoneGarden Net Publishing Free or inexpensive e-books in both fiction and nonfiction. In Microsoft Reader and Adobe PDF formats. Registration (free) with this site is required.
http://www.stonegarden.net/

Tale Wins Marleen Roberts' site for authors & readers.
http://www.talewins.com/

Webooks.com eLibrary Links to over 2,200 free e-books in html, for reading online. In sixteen broad categories, also includes journals & magazines.
http://www.web-books.com/cool/ebooks/Library.htm

New Witguides Large range of topics include health and fitness, computing, pets, parenting, sports, entertainment and more. NB: These books are prepared as downloadable zip files that you unzip to read offline. They show you relevant Amazon books you might like to read as well.
http://www.witguides.com/

WORD IQ Over ten thousand online e-books, in plain text. Available in order of popularity or search for title.
http://www.wordiq.com/books/index.php/

NB: Many commercial e-bookstores also offer a number of free e-books on their sites.

Top

Free audio books

Audiobooks for free
Many classics of literature available, in 25 categories (including Adventure, Crime Mystery, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Westerns, Thrillers, Martial Arts, Spy Stories, Historical & Humour). Also a few non-fiction items. All as mp3 files. However only files playing at 8 Kb/sec files are free. Requires registration, & the supply of some personal information.
http://www.audiobooksforfree.com/

World - Other Languages,Regional and National

NB: If characters in non-Roman fonts do not display, you will need to configure your browser to read them by setting the Font/Encoding Preferences.

African Digital Library
Addressing third world information imbalance by offering free access to anyone living in Africa, this netLibrary-supported initiative lives at:
http://AfricaEducation.org/adl

Free African-American e-books E-books by and about African-Americans. All presented in three formats, HTML, palm (.pdb) and MS Reader (.lit).
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/ebooks/subjects/subjects-afam.html/

Free Apache e-books You can read these online in English, Apache, or in parallel translation (for the latter two, download the Apache/Navajo font provided onsite). Some tales have intriguing titles, such as Coyote Misses Real Rabbit, The Woman Who Had Horse Power and The Foolish People Acquire Coffee.
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/apache/

Free Arabic e-books
UAE Yearbook 2004 in Arabic, French & English. Also UAE: A New Perspective. Download each chapter separately, in PDF.
http://www.uaeinteract.com/uaeint_misc/pdf/index.asp

Mega-links site for Arab literature & culture.
http://www.arabsites.com/links/Arts_and_Humanities/Literature

Free Belarusian e-books at the Belarusian e-Library. Offers Belarusian literature in Belarusian, plus some English, German & other translations.
http://knihi.com/

Free Brasilian e-books More than sixty free titles from 26 authors, including Josй de Alencar, Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis and Afonso Henrique da Lima Barreto. All public domain books or with author permission. Available as downloads for offline reading - formats include Word, PDF, RTF and some Palm PDB. http://vbookstore.uol.com.br/nacional

Some free Brasilian Law e-books in Portuguese, plus the Constitution of Brasil in English. http://www.lifestylesbrazil.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Downloads&file=index

Free Burmese e-books A Collection of Burmese texts, usually as PDFs for the Adobe Reader or in HTML for your Web browser.
http://www.burmalibrary.org/show.php?cat=-1/%20

Free Chinese e-books Supplied by the New Threads Chinese Cultural Society, this electronic library is
claimed to be the most complete web archive available of Chinese classic texts.
http://www.xys.org/

New A search engine that may be used to locate many Chinese-language free books for adults plus for children comics, cartoons & education themes. These text may be read by installing eREAD's free proprietary software (file format STK), which includes many extra "community" features. Courtesy of Taiwan & China-based eREAD Technologies Co. Ltd
http://book.isoshu.com/

Free Colombian e-books More than a dozen free Colombian e-books are available in Spanish
from this site. Historical & literary topics predominate. Formatted for the Adobe Reader.
http://www.epigrafe.com/

Free Croatian e-books
Classics of Croatian Literature. Major Croatian works up to the beginning of the 20th century,
variously as online text, RTF or PDF files.
http://www.ffzg.hr/infoz/dzs/popis.htm

Some free works by contemporary Croatian writers, to read online.
http://www.elektronickeknjige.com/

Free Esperanto e-books eLibrejo. Over 270 books (both original and translated) in Esperanto. For downloading in .pdf format. (Use the Adobe Reader software). Subjects include fiction, poetry, theatre, religion, classic & historic works, children's literature.
http://esperantujo.org/eLibrejo/

Free Farsi e-books Non-fiction online in HTML across a range of topics.
http://www.farsibooksonline.blogspot.com
There is also a Farsi books Yahoo group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/farsibooks/

Free French e-books
Bibliothиque nationale de France (National Library of France). "Sur les 30 millions de pages du fonds numйrisй des imprimйs de la Bibliothиque nationale de France, dont un peu plus du tiers relиve du XIXe siиcle, Gallica permet dиs а prйsent d'accйder а quelques 2500 ouvrages numйrisйs en mode image, complйtйs par UN extrait de la base " Frantext " du CNRS qui permet la consultation de plus de 250 volumes saisis en mode texte." http://gallica.bnf.fr/

Bibliothиque Universelle (ABU). L'accиs libre au texte intйgral d'oeuvres du domaine public francophone sur Internet depuis 1993.
http://abu.cnam.fr/

Bibliopolis. La bibliothиque des lettres : plus de 2000 њuvres (sciences humaines et littйrature) en texte intйgral sont consultables. Grвce au logiciel Trevi, vous pourrez effectuer toutes les recherches possibles sur les auteurs, les ,,, (NB: This is now a passworded site).
http://www.bibliopolis.fr/

Le Chвteau. Offers more than 100 electronic texts of classical French literature. Offrant aussi Le Salon, rassemblant Des sites traitants de textes et auteurs prйsents dans le Chвteau.
http://www.le-chateau.ilias.com/

Social sciences: many classic and contemporary Francophone social sciences books. In Word, PDF and RTF formats. As of July 2004 the collection offers 954 original works from 361 different authors . Thanks to sociology professor Jean-Marie Tremblay, the University of Quйbec at Chicoutimi, & the Toulouse Academy of France.
http://www.uqac.uquebec.ca/zone30/Classiques_des_sciences_sociales

Free German e-books
This free page of a German e-book store offers a few titles, mostly as PDF files.
http://www.ebooks.at/freebie.html

Ten free German titles
http://www.dibi.de/cgi-bin/ebook.storefront

New ngiyaw eBooks. A blast from the past - hard to find German works and authors are featured here, especially by and/or about women. Some classic English and Hungarian books also. Formats available are Adobe Acrobat (.pdf), mobiPocket Reader (.prc), MSReader (.lit) and sometimes TomeRaider (.tr), plus HTML for your Web browser. Thanks to "Katalin und Peter".
http://www.ngiyaw-ebooks.de/ (WAPsite http://wap.ngiyaw-ebooks.de/)

Free Hausa e-books In Hausa and English, from the pen of the late Alhaji Abubakar Imam.
NB: These are very large PDF files for the Adobe reader, more suitable for Broadband than dialup. http://www.abubakarimam.com/od/upload/index.php

Free Hebrew e-books Project Ben-Yehuda aims to make the public domain classics of
Hebrew literature freely accessible to Hebrew readers, as searchable HTML works. Note the browser requirements indicated in the FAQ.
http://benyehuda.org

Free Hungarian e-books Large list of free Magyar elektronikus kцnyvtбrak (Hungarian e-libraries) available at http://www.mek.iif.hu/porta/virtual/magyar/ekonyvt

Free Indian e-books Inaugurated by President of India Dr. A.P.J Abdul Kalam in late 2003, the Digital Library of India now has more than 29,000 books on the Web. It aims to eventually create a free-to-read, searchable online collection of one million books, predominantly in Indian languages, available to everyone over the Internet.
http://www.dli.ernet.in/

Free Italian e-books
Antologia della Letteratura Italiana. Novels, poetry, plays & other texts, both classic & contemporary. In HTML, for reading online. Includes some Dante, Boccaccio, St Francis of Assisi, Alessandro Manzoni and Enrico Maria Ferrari. An initiative of Riccardo Scateni.
http://www.crs4.it/HTML/Literature.html

Free e-books in Italian. Yes, cost is null, zero, niente. Genres include novels, poetry, classics, plays, biographies, horror & fantasy, &New Economy. In MS Reader format only.
http://www.ebookgratis.it//

The Manuzio Project, a free Italian online book site.
http://www.liberliber.it/

Ozoz. Classic texts in Italian, English and Latin. Available as HTML (versione ipertestuale); RTF (ideale per la stampa dei libri); TXT (puro testo): & for download zipped.
http://www.ozoz.it/cyberbooks.htm

Libri Online Pelagus. Italian classical authors online. Works and biographies of twenty-one authors from Alberti to Verga, including Dante, Boccaccio, Machiavelli and Manzoni. In HTML for your web browser.
http://www.pelagus.org/it/libri

Free Japanese e-books

Aozora Bunko. More than 2000 works of copyright-free Japanese literature. Various formats available, including HTML, download zips and Japanese e-book format.
http://www.aozora.gr.jp/

Free Korean e-books
Digital Han'gukhak. From the Academy of Korean Studies.
http://www.koreandb.net/

Kim Mun-gi's Classical Korean literature site.
http://bh.knu.ac.kr/~mkkim

Korean Poetry online
http://www.poet.co.kr/

Free Myanmar (Burmese) e-book
Myanmar Travel Information 2005 eBook (Myanmar is also known as Burma). Free Innwa Myanmar Font (for Windows) also available from this page.
http://www.myanmars.net/download/

Free Polish e-books
Polish literature online, thanks to the University of Gdansk.
http://monika.univ.gda.pl/~literat/index.htm

Polska Biblioteka Internetowa. Includes classic Polish literature among its collections, and Polish translations of famous works from other nations. In HTML.
http://www.pbi.edu.pl/

Free Portuguese e-books
Virtual Books. PDF downloads of titles from a goodly range of authors. http://virtualbooks.terra.com.br/freebook/freebook_portugues1.htm

Projecto Vercial has a few free books, for downloading as PDFs.
http://www.ipn.pt/literatura/

Free Romanian literature e-books
Essays, Poetry, Dramas, Translations, Art http://www.gallup.unm.edu/~smarandache/eBooksLiterature.htm#Romanian

Free Russian e-books
Biblioteka Agava, more online goodies.
http://www.biblioteka.agava.ru/index.htm

Electronic Publications Library. Works from Chekov, Gogol, Pushkin, Tolstoy and other famous
Russian authors. For Reading online in HTML. All in Russian.
http://public-library.narod.ru/

Moshkov's Library. Hundreds of free e-books.
http://www.lib.ru/

Books in Russian formatted for Palm OS devices in .prc format.
http://www.palmpc.ru//

Russian electronic environmental library.
http://www.ecoline.ru/books/index.htm

Russian SciFi & Fantasy books available online here, in both Russian & English. Pioneering site, since 1996.
http://www.rusf.ru/

Free Sanskrit e-books The Puranas (64), and Sanskrit Proverbs, are available as downloadable
MS Word documents from this site. The Purana file is zipped.
http://www.dharmicscriptures.org/literature.htm

Free Scottish and Glaswegian e-books From the Glasgow Digital Library (GDL). Currently five books each about Scotland and Glasgow, available online in plain text at: http://gdl.cdlr.strath.ac.uk/gdlebooks.html

Dictionary of the Scots Language Comprises searchable electronic editions of the two major historical dictionaries of the Scots language: the Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue (DOST - covers Scots words in use from the twelfth to the end of the seventeenth centuries) and the Scottish National Dictionary (SND - for the period since).
http://www.dsl.ac.uk/dsl/

Free Serbian e-books Projekat Rastko. Biblioteka srpske kulture. The most popular e-library in Serbia and Montenegro. In addition, some Serbian literature is offered in other languages including English, German, French, Spanish, Romanian, Slovenian, Russian, & Ukrainian.
http://www.rastko.org.yu/

Free Slovenian e-books Slovenian texts - copyright-free classic Slovenian literature, with a few
authorised modern items. Available to read online.
http://www.ijs.si/lit/leposl.html

Free Spanish e-books
Free literary unpublished texts, especially in Spanish and Catalan.
http://www.badosa.com/

e-autores. Includes Latin American national sites. Audio books also available.
http://www.e-autores.com/Free.htm

Free Swedish e-books
eBoklagret Omnibus. More than 230 works from 41 Swedish authors, as PDF downloads. http://www.omnibus.se/eBoklagret

Free Turkish e-books
Tьrk Цykьleri Sandigi. From Texas Tech University, popular Turkish tales and other literature,
in both Turkish and English versions. Download as PDFs for the Adobe Reader 5.0 or above.
NB: for reading, study, or citation only.
http://aton.swco.ttu.edu/

Sufism & Science. MS Reader format.
http://www.ahmedbaki.com/turkce/ebooklar
(English versions also available at http://www.ahmedbaki.com/english/ebooks/,
with German to come).

Free Ukrainian e-books The Electronic Library of Ukrainian Literature. Classic texts of Ukrainian prose. Available in both HTML and PDF formats.Thanks to Prof. Maxim Tarnawsky at the University of Toronto, Canada, various Ukrainian publishers and other supporters.
http://www.utoronto.ca/elul/

Free USA e-books. USA Today's Open Book program. Presented as a separate section on the newspaper's website, Open Book runs original stories from well-known novelists and offers them free to all visitors. http://www.openbook.usatoday.com/

Free Vietnamese e-books Vietnamese Literature Electronic Library.
http://www.vhvn.com/

Free Urdu e-books Awaz Sayeed's short stories. From the noted author, online in HTML.
http://www.awazsayeed.com/awazstories.html/

English-Urdu dictionary "Search Dictionary" translates a word from English to Urdu. Also from Urdu Naskh and Urdu Roman to English (not all browsers supported yet for the latter two).
http://www.urduword.com/Home/index.cgi/

Dictionary of the Welsh Language (subject to further corrections) The First edition is available as an 18MB PDF file, suitable for broadband download, You may search this on your own computer using Adobe Reader 5 and above. It is hoped that by mid-2006 a concise interactive version of the Dictionary will be available on the Web. NB: A second edition is a work in progress.
http://www.aber.ac.uk/geiriadur/gpc_pdfs.htm#DANGOSEIRIAU/%20

Renewed Free Welsh e-books Llyfrgell Owen - a Library of Welsh Language Texts. Works are presented In plain text format. This fledging site lacks funding and welcomes volunteers to enlarge it. Apкl yw hon felly am gydweithwyr, cyfranogwyr a chyfranwyr.
http://www.testunau.org/

Top

Individual Topics/Miscellaneous

Alchemy e-books The text is plain, but an amazing array of illustrations on this unusual site more than compensate. Most works are in English, but six other languages are also represented. A huge site, from alchemy authority Adam McLean.
http://www.levity.com/alchemy/home.html

American Indian tales - Coyote Stories/Poems Native American stories from the American Indian Heritage Foundation, online in HTML.
http://www.indians.org/welker/coyote.htm

New Americana
Earthbound - Stories from a Ghost Town Authentic period tales from Jerome, Arizona. A real treat, online in HTML, with great historical pictures.
http://www.jerometimes.com/earthbound.html
(Read about the fascinating story of Jerome itself at http://www.jerometimes.com/)

New Books for Phones
Freebooks for phones
This text-to-phone site enables you to progressively download free classic literature (Poe, Verne, H.G. Wells, Conan Doyle, Brothers Grimm and many others) to your mobile phone (Am.=cell phone). You can also rotate the text to read in a more useful "landscape" format if desired. Moreover you can even request most of the books from Project Gutenberg.
http://www.tx2ph.com

British Women Romantic Poets
Project E-text editions of poetry by British and Irish women written (not necessarily published) between 1789 and 1832, a period traditionally known in English literary history as the Romantic period. A digital initiative of the University of California, Davis, from the Shields Library. Available in HTML & SGML.
http://www.lib.ucdavis.edu/BWRP

Chemistry This useful site from Alexander Ragoisha of Byelorussia offers free Full-Text Journals in Chemistry. Most are English language, with a section in Russian. Usually in HTML and/or PDF.
http://www.chemistry.bsu.by/abc/current/fulltext.htm

Children's/Young Adult Books
A variety of famous classic titles.
http://www.bookspot.com/onlinebooks/childrens.htm

Children's Books Online: the Rosetta Project Children's illustrated literature. Hundreds of children's books online. Because of the high picture content each page is presented as a separate image file (jpeg), or the whole book may be downloaded as a compressed (zip) file to read offline. In English, with some translated variously into Chinese, Farsi, Finnish, French, Dutch, German, Greek, Italian, Spanish, Maori, Polish, Romanian or Swedish.
http://www.childrensbooksonline.org/

Comics
Free daily comic strips with back archives. Related goodies for sale. They have Ginger Meggs!
http://www.comics.com/

Lots of e-freebies from DC.
http://www.dccomics.com/

Computing

Free Computer and Scientific books online Over 480 full-text computer & internet books (some titles offer excerpts only). The front webpage shows new or updated titles, while the rest may be accessed alphabetically or by searching the database. You may also buy a paperback edition. In HTML for online reading, access one chapter at a time.
http://hogan-productions.com/books/

Betabooks. Allows computing professionals to view partial and sometimes complete text versions of selected emerging technology titles online. Bet@Books viewing is free, & invites comments and feedback.
http://books.mcgraw-hill.com/betabooks

Dan Preston's Infoheaven site offers his e-book "How To Buy The Perfect Computer" free. For those who join his mailing list or purchase books, other free items are available. http://infoheaven.bravepages.com/DansEBOOK/PerfCPUindex.htm

Free Windows Security e-books. Surprisingly, these individual chapters or entire books are dowloadable in .pdf format. You need to register to access them.
http://www.windowsitlibrary.com/ebooks

Realtime Publishers offer some valuable free Windows titles in Microsoft .lit or Adobe PDF formats.
("Real-time publishing" is the concept of posting a book as chapters/volumes are written, making up-to-the minute information available. You need to register to read the books - registered users will be notified via email when new chapters/volumes are added or existing content modified. Series include The Definitive Guides (for technical professionals), The Shortcut Guides (for the busy administrator and developer), and The Savvy Consumer Guides for consumers.
http://cc.realtimepublishers.com/rtp.asp

New Useful Internet & Computer Tips - Volume 1 - Revised. 250 useful tips and definitions, in PDF (Portable Document Format). A 1.08 MB book for the Adobe Reader. Especially handy for beginners or to check out that odd mysterious term.
http://www.ebooks-ms.com/k_computer_and_internet.html

Cooking
The USENET Cookbook Main dishes, appetizers & snacks, bread/pasta, beverages, cookies or cakes, sauces, salads, soups, deserts, vegetable dishes etc. Vegetarian alternatives offered. Permission to copy without fee all or part of this material is granted provided that the copies are not made or distributed for direct commercial advantage. Copying is by permission of the USENET Community Trust or the original contributor. {Copyright (c) 1987 USENET Community Trust}.
http://www.lysator.liu.se/etexts/recept/main.html

e-Cookbooks.net. Some 18 free samples are available from this commercial site, as pdfs for Adobe Acrobat Reader.
http://www.e-cookbooks.net/

Current Affairs
From prolific writer Shmuel (Sam) Vaknin: lively, controversial musings on issues in economics, politics, the Balkans, international affairs, history, psychology and more. Download as MS Word, RTF or PDF files.
http://samvak.tripod.com/freebooks.html

Digital Issues

"Get Digitized" e-book Clueless about all things digital? I mean, absolutely no idea, really? Or just unsure about one or two devices or applications? This 40 page illustrated primer will give you the basic lowdown on everything from computers and PDA's to WiFi, BlueTooth and that mysterious acronym VoIP. This e-book is a PDF, a file format for downloading to read at your leisure with the Adobe (Acrobat) Reader software.
http://www.digitizeme.info/freedownload.html

Digital Signal Processing Library A useful select library for those interested in electronics,
Digital Signal Processing (DSP) projects, mathematics for programmers and related topics. It links to titles that are free to download or read online. Some in PDF format, or zipped, others in HTML for your Web browser. Most books are available in individual chapters. Thanks to Refik Hadzialic of Bosnia-Herzegovina. NB: strictly for private use and study. Please respect the generosity of these authors.
http://www.e-dsp.com/books.php

E-book publishing This fledgling e-publisher/bookstore also offers some free inspirational/New Age titles, free covers for e-authors & a free e-book on drawing. In PDF at: http://www.ebookpublishing.us/ep/free.htm/%20%20

Economics The OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) "groups 30 member countries sharing a commitment to democratic government and the market economy", and does extensive economic and social research. You can get some summary information from OECD publications free here (or pay for full texts as .pdf downloads, or order print copies from their bookshop).
http://puck.sourceoecd.org/vl=1095284/cl=49/nw=1/rpsv/home.htm

Electronics ee.com A free technical library and professional community for electrical and electronics engineers. Contains over 5,600 documents in a variety of forms. Qualified contributions welcome. Resource areas include aerospace, analogue and digital design, biomedical technology, computer engineering, consumer electronics, digital signal processing, dsp, electric power, microprocessors, nanotechnology, magnetic & electro physics, jobs, meeting, business, research and development, semiconductors, telecommunication, vlsi. In PDF & PostScript. Members need to register, but visitors are also welcomed.
http://www.electronics-ee.com/

English language reference

English dictionary. Over 320,000 references & still growing, with both US and British spellings. On this minimalist (no frills) website you can look up words alphabetically or by search. From Mike Harding.
http://www.english-dictionary.us/

English to American Dictionary. Prepared by a Scot who has spent some time in the USA, this fine work helps puzzled English speaking people understand American expressions better .
http://english2american.com/

Etymology. The Online Etymology Dictionary. In HTML. This valuable, attractively presented resource is from historian and author Douglas Harper.
http://www.etymonline.com/

English literature and Classics

Elibron Over one thousand titles online in plain text, also versions for PC/Mac or for Palm, Visor & PocketPC. Free, with paperback and other versions also available for purchase.
http://www.elibron.com/english/lists/free_ebook.phtml

Literature Post A collection of classic books, plays, stories and poems for online reading.
Nearly seventy authors are represented. In plain text.
http://www.literaturepost.com/

Virtual Imprint A select catalogue of free original and classic fiction. Available for download in
MS Reader, Adobe Reader ( PDF), or to read online in your Web browser (in their Virtual Imprint WebBook format - a simple but bookmarkable double page layout. IE 5+ recommended). Their
home page also offers an array of purchasable services for bibliophiles.
http://www.virtualimprint.com/catalog.shtmll

A number of famous Irish literary works available free to download as text or RTF files, also some
HTML short stories to read online. Yes, all of the following famous "English" authors were actually Irish - George Bernard Shaw, Bram Stoker (author of Dracula), Jonathan Swift, J.M.Synge, Oscar Wilde.
http://www.ireland-information.com/irishliterature.htm

Brennan Emerson's works. Fiction and philosophy as novel, short story or poetry, plus the author's autobiography. Three books available for online reading; downloads are as zipped plain text files.
http://www.geocities.com/kingmarcine

New The Literary Encyclopedia More than a thousand scholars have contributed to this huge
Web reference work, focused on literature in English. With nearly three thousand entries, and well
over 5million words, there's any amount to learn here about writers, literary works and literary topics, plus numerous links to more. And they throw in a bit of a Books-in-print too!
http://www.litencyc.com/

New Gardening

Online Botanical Illustrations For plant & garden lovers and home craft enthusiasts. This lavishly illustrated short book also contains a wealth of supporting hyperlinks. It's a 1.1 MB PDF file. http://www.moplants.com/eBooks.php

General Reference
AllRefer.com Provides a free encyclopedia (Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, from the Columbia University Press) & gazetteer, medical encyclopedia & other valuable reference resources.
Thousands of articles available here in HTML, with useful links to related topics.
http://www.allrefer.com/

Dictionaries of 14 languages - English, Chinese, French, German, Greek, Hebrew,Italian, Japanese, Latin, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Turkish &Vietnamese. Also specialised dictionaries including Computers, Law, Science.
http://www.online-dictionary.net/start.htm/

New Health

Free Health tip e-books. Topics of these useful mini-books include Acne, ADD/ADHD, addictions,Low-carb dieting, Nutrition and Safe Tanning,. In PDF format for the Adobe Reader. http://www.tophealthtips.com/

History
Periodical Historical Atlas of Europe
How have the states of Europe changed from century to century in the last two millenniums?
Check it out in the 21 maps of this atlas. Some interesting Roman features too.
http://www.euratlas.com/summary.htm

New Free history and philosophy audio books, in mp3 format. Broaden your horizons on your ipod or other Mp3 player These range from Plato to Karl Marx, with an emphasis on works by or on famous American figures from yesteryear. The site name comes from Benjamin Franklin's literary club, called The Junto.
http://www.ejunto.com/

Mathematics
The Electronic Library of Mathematics contains free online journals, article collections, and
monographs in the field of mathematics. View on-line or download as .pdfs for offline use.
http://www.emis.de/ELibEMS.html

MathWorld. A comprehensive and interactive mathematics encyclopedia intended for students, educators, maths enthusiasts and researchers. Claimed to be the Web's most complete maths resource.
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/

New "Pseudocolor in Pure and Applied Mathematics", a free on-line e-book in progress with source code by Douglas C. Youvan. In HTML for your Web browser.
http://www.youvan.com/ , mirrored at http://www.pseudocolor.com/

New Mathematics e-books, free under restricted licence. Please read the terms and conditions carefully. Free to students using these books for their own study, or for teachers under certain limitedcircumstances (payment required otherwise). Titles include Basic Concepts of Mathematics, Mathematical Analysis I, & An Introduction to the Theory of Numbers. As PDFs. http://www.trillia.com/products.html

Medicine

Medical Dictionary Online. "A free online medical dictionary search engine for definitions of medical terminology, pharmaceutical drugs, healthcare equipment, health conditions, medical devices, specialty terms and medical abbreviations." Note that definitions are brief, and should only be considered as a launching pad for further research. A handy resource, but self-diagnosers should note the disclaimer.
http://www.online-medical-dictionary.org/

Medical Encyclopedia An online medical and health encyclopedia containing information on over 1,500 topics, including conditions, diseases, injuries, nutrition, surgeries, symptoms, tests and special topics. Use alphabetically or through the search function. The site also features significant current news stories and a variety of other resources.
http://www.healthopedia.com/encyclopedia.html/

National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) Bookshelf. A collection of searchable biomedical books for the Web. Illustrated, in HTML. Medical issues covered include asthma, cancer, high blood pressure, obesity, & retroviruses. There are also more general works on topics including the Cell, Developmental Biology, Glycobiology, Genes and Disease, Immunobiology and Neurochemistry. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=Books

Freebooks for doctors
Site dedicated to the promotion of free access to medical books over the Internet. 550+ books to read online in English, French, German & Spanish, plus a few titles in Catalan, Italian, Portuguese, Norwegian, Romanian, Russian & Turkish.
http://freebooks4doctors.com/

Handhelds for Doctors. Read the text free. A paperback version is also available for purchase.
http://www.handheldsfordoctors.com/book/text/index.htm

Military History
Richard Jensen offers a large page oflinks to a wide variety of resources in this subject area, from ancient times to present day. Jensen is an American scholar (retired Professor of History) http://tigger.uic.edu/~rjensen/military.html/

New Personal Finances

Debt Management
A debt management company provides free downloads on some debt and credit related topics. More may follow. In PDF format for the Adobe Reader.
http://www.debtconsolidationcare.com/books/

New Pets

e-Booklets about Pets. A range of mammals, reptiles, fish and birds are covered in these free illustrated short booklets, courtesy of a Houston, Texas online " pet superstore". A boon for beginners. Download in PDF format for the Adobe Reader.
http://www.cheappetstore.com/ebooks.php/

Philosophy
The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Alphabetical and searchable. A voluntary academic effort. http://www.utm.edu/research/iep//

Poetry Many traditional poems, plus lyrics of traditional songs. To read online, or download as zipped files to your PC.
http://www.indbazaar.com/soulkurry/books.asp?cat=14

Research
New FreeFullText.com provides direct links to over 7000 scholarly periodicals which allow some or all of their online content to be viewed by anyone for free (though some may require free registration).
http://www.freefulltext.com/

New Radio Frequency e-Books For the technically savvy, this helpful site provides mostly PDF (Adobe Reader) downloads. Topics include RF Fundamentals, Electromagnetism, Antenna fundamentals & design, Modulation, Spectral & Signal analysis, RF measurement and filters, Amplifier design, Mixers, Oscillators and more.
http://www.rfzone.org/free-rf-ebooks/

Science The Public Library of Science is provided by "a non-profit organization of scientists and physicians committed to making the world's scientific and medical literature a freely available public resource". PLoS will publish its own journals. So far there is PLoS Biology (a monthly, launched October 2003, both online and in print). PLoS Medicine is to follow during 2004. Formats used are HTML & PDF.
http://www.plos.org/

E-Library of Science Mathematics e-books plus a few philosophy, physics and other titles. In pdf format (use the Adobe Reader).
http://www.gallup.unm.edu/~smarandache/eBooks-otherformats.htm

Science Fiction/Fantasy, & Horror

Doctor Who e-books. Never screened, these Seventh Doctor stories from1992-1997 are a rare treasure from the friendly folk at the BBC. Online, by page in SHTML, or in plain text chapters if you wish to print them out.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/doctorwho/ebooks/

Online since August 1997, UK-based Infinity Plus publishes some original fiction, but mostly republishes those short stories & other shorter works you're always trying to find again. With extra input from many writers that you may not see anywhere else. As such, this wonderful archive is a boon to devotees. Online in HTML, or you can save them ('Save as...') to read off-line. However please remember they remain copyright for all purposes other than simple reading.
http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/index.htm

SF/Fantasy e-books & assistance for the physically impaired. ReadAssist is an organization of Science Fiction and Fantasy fans with an easy-to-use site streamlined to assist those with physical disabilities. They provide links to sources of both free and purchasable written and audio e-books, in those genres. Further links are to software & hardware of use to those with impaired mobility or vision.
http://www.readassist.org/

Gormglaith, by Heidi Wyss. 76,000 words of radical feminist separatist literature set in what is claimed to be a scientifically plausible future. Aesthetically presented for online reading.
http://www.literateweb.com/wyss.htm

Godspawn, by A. Zoic. A prophetic title with a human clone hero. Written at sunny Balmoral Beach in Sydney, & available in no less than 11 formats. Worth visiting the site for the impressive audio-visual opening alone (Active X controls must be enabled -if you get a blank site, check your browser settings).
http://www.godspawn.com//

Grotesque, A Gothic Epic, by Graven. An intense, illustrated Gothic novel about religion and the Black Death. With animated sound effects, online in HTML plus. Excellently presented, but with its gruesome theme not for the faint-hearted.
http://www.gegraven.com/

Technical Reports Online
"The Virtual Technical Reports Center". Links to technical reports, preprints, reprints, dissertations, theses, and research reports of all kinds, as either full-text reports or searchable extended abstracts
http://www.lib.umd.edu/ENGIN/TechReports/Virtual-TechReports.html

Television
Encyclopedia of Television. Includes more than 1,000 essays examining programmes, people, historic moments and trends, disputes, scandals and much else in the saga of the small screen. Also contains histories of major TV networks and broadcasting systems around the world, plus resource materials, photos and bibliographical information.
http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/index.html

Travel Universal Currency Converter. (Previous e-book version not currently available).
http://www.xe.com/ucc/

IIT - Information Interactive Technology This Netherlands-based site offers some classic e -books include Wodehouse humour, Sherlock Holmes and a serious essay About Violence and Democracy. There are also mini travel guides for all European countries. In PDF, use the Adobe Reader. Patience may be required; this site is slow to download for modem users.
http://www.ebookseguides.com/

U.S. Declaration of Independence, U.S. Constitution, all Amendments, the Monroe Doctrine, the Emancipation Proclamation & the Gettysburg Address. Fully indexed. Available free as a downloadable zip file (requires a zip utility to decompress). Download the freedom.zip (40kb) under the sub-heading Freedom documents, from R.E. Harvey, at:
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/r_harvey

U.S. Rightwing Christian Fundamentalism The Institute for Christian Economics is a Texas-based, U.S. Christian fundamentalist site. Many "bible-based" religious & social titles are offered, plus a substantial foray into conservative and pro-free market economics & politics. Books are available in HTML or the DjVu compressed file format. The site authors recommend the latter, which they claim is superior to & less memory-hungry than PDF for representing original works. A free DjVu reader may be downloaded from the site.
http://www.freebooks.com/

Website Development Rick Rouse provides several free e-books, downloadable as zip files, for webmasters. They include How To Get Thousands Of Links To Your Website and How To Triple Your Website Traffic Every 90 Days under the heading Webmaster Freebies. Also some useful software for webmasters.
http://www.rlrouse.com/freebies.html

William Blake Archive Literary and visual works by William Blake and his circle. Includes fully searchable and scalable electronic editions of all of Blake's 19 illuminated works. In HTML & SGML. With Biography, Glossary, and Chronology. Sponsored by the U.S. Library of Congress, with some high-powered support. http://www.blakearchive.org.uk/main.html

Top

Sacred Texts & Religion

Ancient Egypt

Ancient Egyptian Pantheon Names
Descriptions & other information on the gods of old Egypt.
http://www.vibrani.com/gods.htm

Egyptian Book of the Dead - The Papyrus of Ani; Egyptian Book of the Dead. http://www.sas.upenn.edu/African_Studies/Books/Papyrus_Ani.html

Ra and the Serpent Egyptian myth of creation.
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~humm/Resources/StudTxts/raSerpnt.html

Asian Classic Texts
The Asian Classics Input Project works to preserve disappearing books containing the great ideas of the Eastern half of humanity, and to make these books and ideas accessible to the world at large. Downloadable mainly as zipped text & rtf files. Includes ACIP Release V: World.Wide.Wisdom. Over 200 previously unreleased titles from the classics of traditional Asian philosophy in the Tibetan language.
http://www.asianclassics.org/

Baha'i

Bahб'н Sacred Writings and other books, articles etc. To read online, or downloadable as text, rtf or Word documents.
http://www.bahai-library.org/

Baha'i Library Online (in English, French & Spanish)
http://bahai-library.com/

The Kitбb-i-Aqdas
http://www.ibiblio.org/Bahai/Texts/English/AQD/AQD-4.html
Below, a downloadable (.ZIP) HTML version of this "Most Holy Book" of the Bahб'н Faith.
http://www.powerup.com.au/~takkenb/Kitab-i-Aqdas/Kitab-i-Aqdas.htm

The Kitбb-i-Iqбn
http://reference.bahai.org/en/t/b/KI/

the Hidden Words of Baha'u'llah in HTML, with a FLASH version also. Both at: http://www.upliftingwords.org/writings/hiddenwords/

Buddhism

BuddhaNet These Buddhist texts may be read online with the Adobe Reader or variants thereof. Texts are presently available in English (UK & US variants), French, German, Spanish & Japanese. The texts may also be downloaded as zipped .pdf files to read offline.
http://www.buddhanet.net/ebooks.htm

Buddhist Reading Room Sutras & other content for online reading. In American English. Some texts also available for download as ZIP format archives (IBM / Windows users) or StuffIt format (Macintosh users).
http://www.buddhistreading.com/

Online Dharma Libraries
"Authors and/or publishers of the works have granted us permission to make these electronic editions freely available to the public. In the Buddhist tradition, this is the practice of dana, or "freely-offered generosity."…Extensive collection of Buddhist texts for downloading.
http://www.dharmanet.org/files.html

Sacred Texts: Buddhism
In English, for reading online.Includes modern (early 20th century) compilations of the Buddhist Canon, plus texts of Northern & Southern Buddhist schools,Tibetian Buddhism and much else.
http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud

More Buddhist e-books for online reading.
http://www.tipitaka.net/pali/

Cao Dai
Centre for Studies in Caodaism (Sydney)
Online full text Cao Dai scriptures & books, articles, images,& audio-visuals, in Vietnamese, French & English. Includes information on the history, organization, philosophy and practice of Caodaism. An Australian archive in HTML, thanks to Cong-Tam Dao of the University of Sydney.
http://nla.gov.au/nla.arc-10190

Christianity

The Holy Bible (King James version) in HTML
http://www.bartleby.com/br/108.html

The NET Bible (New English Translation) a completely new translation of the Bible. Includes many thousands of hyperlinked (clickable) translator's notes (which may include theological opinion). Online in HTML. Courtesy of the Biblical Studies Press.
http://netbible.bible.org//

The Bible, New International Version Online, in individual chapters.
UK version: http://www.biblegateway.com/versions/index.php?action=getVersionInfo&vid=64#booklist/
US version http://www.biblegateway.com/versions/index.php?action=getVersionInfo&vid=31#booklist/
Note usage restrictions as explained at the top of the Biblegateway webpage.

The Holy Bible, Douay-Rheims Version, in HTML
http://www.catholicfirst.com/bibledrv.cfm

New American Bible, from United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, in HTML
http://www.nccbuscc.org/nab/bible

Old & New Testaments of the Bible formatted for eReader (Palm Reader). New Testament as one download. Old Testament is in four parts. King James version.
http://www.palmdigitalmedia.com/free/ebooks

Latin Vulgate Bible, for Palm
This I.8MB .prc file download requires a Palm DOC reader. Find under "L" in the many Bible versions available free at:
http://spiritualworx.com/skw_template.php?page=PalmSoftware.php&fext=prc/

Old and New Testament books in groups, in PilotDoc format, zipped. http://www.antioch.com.sg/edgar/bibledoc.html

New Testament TNIV version, as PDF for Adobe Reader.
http://www.tniv.info/bible/index.php

Bible Downloads for Palm OS, Pocket PC, Smartphone and some Symbian devices A variety of Bible versions, plus reader software, available in English, & Albanian, Arabic, Byzantine Greek, Chinese, Czech, Dutch, Esperanto, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Latin, Romanian, Spanish & Swedish.
http://www.olivetree.com/handheld/free/

The Bible, text search of New International Version, in 19 languages.
http://www.biblegateway.com/cgi-bin/bible?version=NIV

The Bible, text search of Revised Standard Version
http://www.hti.umich.edu/r/rsv

The Bible, text search of New American Standard Version
http://www.biblegateway.com/cgi-bin/bible?version=NASB

Christian Classics Electronic Library for the Palm Pilot
http://members.aol.com/PilotCCEL

Christian Classics Ethereal Library
Huge collection of significant Christian works. Especially in English, but with some Russian & Chinese e-texts, plus a few in Latin, Greek, French, German, Czech, Italian & Spanish. Many In ThML (Theological Markup Language, an XML variant), or in HTML. Also as online facsimile, plain text, Open eBook, Palm DocBook, or Microsoft Reader formats. Some MP3 audio files also. From Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Missouri.
http://www.ccel.org/

Christian Latin - Online versions of Christian Latin texts from Abelard to Thomas а Kempis.
http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/christian.html

The Catholic Encyclopedia (1914 edition), for online reading or consultation. Hyperlinked.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen

Some Catholic devotional works formatted for Palm OS and MS Word.
http://www.rosarynmore.com/download.html

Project Wittenberg Works by and about Martin Luther and other Lutherans.
http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/wittenberg-home.html

Project Wittenberg's Lutheran Electronic Archive: gives priority to documents written by Luther or about Luther. Documents by other Lutherans and Lutheran churches or organizations are produced to a lesser extent. The majority of the works are in HTML or text format.
http://www.ctsfw.edu/etext/

The Walther Library also provides links to a broader range of Protestant and Lutheran works at:
http://www.ctsfw.edu/library/probono.php

Coptic Texts The St. Pachomius Library. In HTML.
http://www.voskrese.info/spl/index.html/
Note: For an explanation of the current relationships among the Coptic, Eastern Orthodox and Ethiopian churches see: http://mb-soft.com/believe/txn/coptic.htm

Early Christian Writings: New Testament, Apocrypha, Gnostics, Church Fathers. In HTML.
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/

The Ecole Initiative - a "Hypertext Encyclopedia of Early Church History," up to the Reformation.
http://www2.evansville.edu/ecoleweb/

Mormonism (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) The Book of Mormon,
online by chapters in HTML. Downloadable version (.pdb file) for Palm & Windows CE devices also available. Other Mormon e-texts here too.
http://scriptures.lds.org/bm/contents

Gnostic
The Gospel of Thomas The "Scholars' Translation" of the Gospel of Thomas, by Stephen Patterson and Marvin Meyer.
http://www.misericordia.edu/users/davies/thomas/Trans.htm

Gospel of Thomas commentary
http://www.gospelthomas.com/

The Gnostic Society Library A comprehensive collection of Gnostic texts online.
http://www.gnosis.org/library.html

Ecclesiastical calendar conversion. Warning - this gets complicated.
http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/byauth/woolley/calconv.html

The Christian Jokes Collection More than 430 religious jokes, compiled by a young woman from South Australia. Her name however is not frivolous, she has Multiple Chemical Sensitivity syndrome.
http://www.bubblegirl.net/cjc.html

Desiderata - Meaning, that which is to be desired. Much concentrated & timeless wisdom here.
http://artandpoetry.com/art/sherrie/desiderata.html

Epic of Gilgamesh Summary of the ancient text, this version written by the oldest-known named human author. Written c. 2000 B.C.
http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/MESO/GILG.HTM/

Hinduism

The Vedas - claimed to be mankind's oldest scriptures, and considered by Hindus to be a direct revelation of God. Read online in HTML. In 7 parts and 21 chapters. English translation by Professor Raimon Panikkar. Click on the Vedic Experience link.
http://www.himalayanacademy.com/books/vedic_experience/VEIndex.html
Huge collection of online HTML Hindu e-books and PDFs.
http://www.himalayanacademy.com/resources//

Bhagavad-Gita. In audio versions in16 languages, or as HTML in English only.
http://www.bhagavad-gita.org/

Dharmic Scriptures. This page at present contains the four Vedas as a zipped Word file for downloading, plus Vedas Exerpts, Vedic Samhitas & Brahmanas Introduction, and the Upanishads, as Word files. Expansion into other formats is planned.
http://www.dharmicscriptures.org/scriptures.htm

Upanishads - The Texts Available individually online, or downloadable gathered as one PDF file. http://sanatan.intnet.mu/upanishads/upanishads.htm

Upanishads - Transliteration Key
http://www.advaita-vedanta.org/avhp/upanishad.html

Dvaita Text Resources Some classic Hindu texts as PDF files in Sanskrit, some with Roman script versions.
http://www.dvaita.net/

Hindu Insights Many mini-texts on Hinduism for reading on this award-winning site.
http://www.hinduism.co.za/

Ars Floreat
A number of spiritual and sacred texts, including the Bible, the Koran, Plato and some Hindu scriptures, presented in Dutch, from an overall philosophical basis of the Advaita Vedanta tradition of India. In PDF.
http://www.arsfloreat.nl/

Islam

The Koran (Qur'an)

The Qur'an, in four side-by-side English translations. Available by chapters for online reading. http://www.quran.org/quran/quranframe.htm

The Koran An electronically scanned version of M. H. Shakir's English translation of the Holy Qur'an, as published by Tahrike Tarsile Qur'an, Inc., in searchable SGML form.
http://etext.virginia.edu/koran.html

The Koran in the original Arabic, downloadable as a full e-reader software program with support for various fonts and font sizes, 2D animations, MP3 audio sounds, search engine, text color, underline color, tags etc, as prepared by Samir Alicehajic of Zagreb, Croatia. English and German translations are included in the "Koran 6.51" version software. Bosnian, Dutch, French, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese & Turkish translations which may be imported into the above software are also available. An online HTML English Koran translation, plus Hadith (sayings of the Prophet) also feature on this site.
http://www.yildun.com/

Holy Qur'an Viewer, version 2.910 ( as Developed by Jamal Al-Nasir) - Supports Multiple Qur'an Languages, Remote Recitation, Manuscripts. A hadith viewer, a more basic Koran viewer, other e-reader software and some other downloadable literature are also available at this site. http://www.divineislam.co.uk/DivineIslam/Software/QuranViewer2/

Hadith (Sayings and Traditions) A variety of texts online in HTML, some audio also.
http://www.al-islam.org/links.asp?CatId=70

Stories of the Prophets (as a 2.52Mb Self Extracting EXE file).
http://www.DivineIslam.co.uk/DivineIslam/Software/Prophets_Stories/

International Islamic Digital Library "An ambitious project to create a centralized repository of knowledge on Islam and the Muslim communities which is authoritative, comprehensible & reliable".
This Malaysian initiative includes books, manuscripts, multimedia, theses, articles & conference papers. Users need to register.
http://www.iidl.net

Islam Denounces Terrorism (online e-book). http://www.divineislam.co.uk/DivineIslam/Articles/Terrorism/terrorism1.shtml/

Harun Yahya Islamic books online in HTML, or for PDF and MS Word download, from noted Turkish author Harun Yahya. Many titles available in English here. Other languages accessible from the site. http://www.harunyahya.com/m_book_index.php/

NZ Muslim Net Many Muslim e-books in English. Variously as Adobe PDF, Flash, MP3 Audio, HTML & self-contained software programs.