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The creation of the web has made
it
possible for the first time for anyone to access a wide variety of
material previously only available in print. This page contains both
bibliographies of books available on the Web as well as links to those
electronic texts themselves. Because of copyright considerations, the
large majority of these titles are classic works in their fields. The
list below is not intended to be exhaustive.
Online Books
18th
Century E-texts
This site provides an excellent list of links to eighteenth century
writings available on the Web. The author defines the period covered by
the site as running from "Milton through Byron, or thereabouts."
Accessing
The Great
Books
The Great Books attempts to catalogue 240 authors from Hammurabi to
Annie Dillard, focusing primarily on science, literature, and
philosophy. The list of works here is based primarily on the one
developed for the Great Books collection of the Encyclopedia Britannica
by Robert M. Hutchins, Mortimer J. Adler, and Mark Van Doren. The site,
which used to be quite navigable for screen readers, has recently been
made far more difficult. While it is a struggle to negotiate the site,
the effort may be rewarded with access to materials not readily
available elsewhere.
Bartleby.com:
Great
Books Online
Bartleby.com publishes the classics of fiction, nonfiction, verse, as
well as important reference works that are readily accessible by screen
reading software for no charge. The focus is on important titles that
have stood the test of time rather than contemporary works.
The Harvard
Classics
Perhaps the best part of the above site is the section providing access
to the Harvard Classics. The Classics are arguably the most
comprehensive and well-researched anthology of all time. It covers
every major literary figure, philosopher, religion, folklore and
historical subject through the twentieth century. This site makes
available texts with introductions, notes, guides to reading, and
exhaustive indexes.
Bibliomania
Free Online Literature with more than 2000 classic texts, including
literature book notes, author biographies, book summaries, and
reference books. You can read classic fiction, drama, poetry, short
stories and contemporary Articles, and interviews. Study guides to the
most read books and help for teachers are also available. You can
research their reference books, dictionaries, quotations, classic
nonfiction, biographies, and religious texts as well.
Christian
Classics
This site provides links to a variety of online Christian literature
including various versions of the Bible, extensive writings of early
Church fathers, and numerous reference works.
History
of Economic Thought
This site provides links to important texts in economics which are not
under copyright and, when they are, a summary of key ideas is provided.
In addition, the site also features materials arranged by schools of
thought, essays and surveys, and references. Materials may be browsed
or searched.
Classic
Works: Great Literature Online
Great Literature Online provides biographies and full text versions of
the works of several dozen important Western authors. Where other sites
frequently access only one or two of an author's works, this site
attempts to be broader in its coverage of an author's corpus. You can,
for example, find virtually all of Dickens's major books as well as a
significant number of lesser known works.
Free
Electronic Books Online
This site offers a large number of classic works for free. What sets it
apart is a Java program which makes it possible for the visitor to
manage the way the text is presented. You can alter the font, colors,
page justification, etc. The program remembers where you left off and
will automatically bookmark your place. While these are attractive
visual features, unfortunately they are not screen reader friendly.
Classic Reader
At present, this collection contains over 3,000 works of literature
(including 1714 short stories) by 322 authors such as Dickens, Tolstoy,
Shakespeare, and many others. The works are split into seven categories
which may be either browsed or searched. All functions of the site are
free although some features require registration.
The
Online Books Page
This excellent site provides over 25,000 free titles which may be
searched by author, title, or subject. Major sections of the site
include: An index of the thousands of online books freely readable on
the Internet; links to other significant directories and archives of
online texts; special exhibits of particularly interesting types of
online books; and outstanding links to recent news about the
availability of online materials. This is a very good catalogue in its
own right, but, in addition, it is helpful in directing the visitor to
other collections freely available on the Internet.
Banned Books Online
Banned Books Online is a somewhat deceptive title since it provides
links to texts, now considered classics, which were once banned rather
than contemporary pornography.
Yahoo: Art,
Humanity, Literature
Yahoo's book page is no where near as detailed as some other sites in
providing links to e-texts, but it does offer references to useful Web
sites, online journals, etc. that may not be featured at other sites.
Eldritch Press
These books are organized into ten categories, including national
literatures of America, England, Russia, and France, world literature,
World War I, sciences, children's literature and Radicals round out the
collection. It is searchable. Its great strength is that it contains
numerous important, although second tier authors, and their works.
Electronic
Texts in Philosophy
epistemelinks.com Provides an electronic database of 900 works in
philosophy, searchable by title, philosopher, and topic.
Accessible
Writing
The English server from the University of Washington makes available
full electronic texts, including:
For
Literature
Read any one of thousands of classic books free at 4Literature.net. The
4Literature archives include such things as the works of Shakespeare,
religious and historical documents, children's fairy tales, Greek and
Roman classics, and books by famous American authors of the 19th
century.
The
Labyrinth
The Labyrinth, from Georgetown University, offers a staggering
profusion of information, primary as well as secondary, on medieval
studies. Information may be found in French, Iberian, Italian, Latin,
and Middle English and Old English. Monographs, journals, and
bibliographies are also available. Topics range from archaeology to
science. The site may be browsed or searched. It is a high-quality
one-stop shop on the subject.
Greek
Philosophy Archives
This site, from the University of Georgia, is devoted to philosophical
works written in Greek. You can download the works of Plato, Aristotle,
Marcus Aurelius, as well as lesser philosophers.
Alex
Catalogue of Electronic Texts
ALEX Catalogue of Electronic Texts is a database of American and
British literary and philosophical documents which may be searched by
author, title, or date. In addition, a unique feature of this site is
the ability to search multiple documents simultaneously, making it
possible to create more carefully targeted searches. This makes the
site especially helpful, for example, when trying to trace themes in an
author's works.
The Online
Collection of the Internet Public Library
The Internet Public Library Books Collection (formerly known as Online
Texts) contains over 20,000 works that can be browsed by author or by
title. They can also be searched by author, title, key word, or
subject. The collection provides access to a number of works not
readily available in other online collections.
Country Studies - Federal Research Division, Library of Congress
This site contains the online versions of books that were originally
published in hard copy by the Library of Congress to analyze the
history, culture, and government of approximately 100 foreign
countries. While there are some important omissions, if you are looking
for information about most countries, especially if it is not a major
country, this is a good place to begin.
European
Literature -- Electronic Texts
The Electronic Text Collections in Western European Literature
concentrates on providing Internet sources for literary texts in the
western European languages other than English. You can, therefore, find
Catalan and Galician works as well as French and German. Some material,
otherwise under copyright, may be available to visually disabled
visitors.
Online
Literature Library
The Online Literature Library Provides links to a variety of authors,
most nineteenth century, and their works. Selections range from Charles
Darwin's Origin of Species to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Hound of
the Baskervilles." Where many other sites only feature a single work by
an author, this site makes an effort to feature several important
titles in the author's corpus.
World
eBook Library
The World Electronic Text Library Foundation is a global coordinated
effort to preserve and disseminate classic works of literature,
serials, bibliographies, dictionaries, encyclopedias, and other
reference works in a number of languages around the world. The mission
is to aid students and educators by providing free public access to the
world's most complete collection of electronic texts online as well as
offer a variety of services and resources that support and strengthen
the instructional programs of education, elementary through post
baccalaureate studies. Through the Telnet Research Library Collections,
it is possible to search conferences and events, directories and
indexes, dictionaries, encyclopedias, elections and constitutions,
language translator, list of books online, and much more. The corpus is
searchable by author, title, or subject.
Perseus
Digital Library
The Perseus Project, housed in the Classics Department at Tufts
University, makes available primary and secondary sources,
encyclopedias, and bibliographies dealing primarily with ancient Greek
and Latin writings. The corpus may be searched in a variety of ways. Of
special interest is the ability to search for the origins and
occurrences of Greek and Latin terms. This site is outstanding for the
specialist but is not for the novice.
Refdesk
Fourteenth to seventeenth century English literature, Aesop's fables,
Project Gutenberg, the Electronic Text Center in the arts in
humanities, great books of Western civilization, E-text Archives, and
much more are catalogued here for reading online.
East of the
Web
The purpose of East of the Web is to make short stories more accessible
to users of the internet. You can browse its library by category or
search it for a title, author or keyword. Clicking on an author's name
lists all his/her stories along with further information and links.
Stories can be read online, printed, or downloaded for reading offline.
Categories include crime, horror, detective, humor, romance, and
children's short stories. The text versions of the stories are screen
reader friendly.
Libraries With
Electronic Books
In addition to presenting links to original texts, the Libraries with
Electronic Books also provides lists of books, reviews,
autobiographies, bibliographies, and much more.
Tuffley
Computer Services - Technical Communication Services
This site probably provides the best list of links to other sites of
online texts. While many other sites on this page do this to some
extent, the Tuffley site is more detailed. You can find links to sites
that can be found no where else. These sites will be especially helpful
for the student of foreign languages, literature, history, and politics
seeking primary sources.
The
Avalon Project at the Yale Law School: Documents in Law,
History and Diplomacy
The Avalon Project has as its purpose to make available electronic
versions of documents in law, economics, history, and diplomacy. The
collection is extensive, accessible, and searchable. Not only are hard
to find texts made available, but links to supporting documents
explicitly mentioned in the texts are featured. This is an excellent
and convenient reference for primary source material.
Page By
Page Books.
This site has hundreds of free classic books that are in the public
domain, including United States historical documents and presidential
inaugural addresses. Books can be read online one page at a time.
Questia
Questia bills itself as “the first online library that provides 24/7
access to the world's largest online collection of books and journal
articles in the humanities and social sciences, plus magazine and
newspaper articles.” You can search each and every word of all of the
books and journal articles in the collection. You can read every title
cover to cover. The site provides exclusive access to more than 67,000
books and 1.5 million articles. Some portions of the site are
accessible for free, but it is essentially offered by subscription.
Electronic
Text Collections
Has links to historical and
literary sources from different Dartmouth University hosts this
outstanding and extensive site of electronic collections covering
Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and the United States. The site
itself is quite accessible, although much of the material referenced
may not be. Nonetheless, this is an excellent reference for serious
study of the topics treated.
The Emory Women Writers Resource Project
The Emory Women Writers Resource Project is a collection of edited and
unedited texts by women writing in English from the seventeenth century
through the nineteenth century. The Project is a teaching tool,
designed to offer graduate and undergraduate students in various
disciplines the opportunity to edit their own texts. Examples of
graduate student work are available under the heading "Edited Texts." A
complete list of unedited texts, the pedagogic introduction,
suggestions for assignments, and bibliographies are provided.
Searchable, browseable, and very accessible.
World eBook
Library
The World eBook Library is “the world's largest digital archive of PDF
eBooks and eDocuments.” The collection hosts more than 400,000PDF
titles and is constantly growing. The database permits full text
searching with an embedded dictionary. It is necessary to establish an
account with a participating library, although you can try some of the
features for free at the site. The public access section of this
consortium-based collection is searchable but not browsable.
Read
Print
This site offers a free online library of thousands of free books,
poems, and short stories for students, teachers, and the classic
enthusiast. Searchable and browseable.
The
Internet Classics Archive
The English translations of 441 classic works, mostly Greek and Roman,
are available and searchable by author or title at the Internet
Classics Archive. You can also perform a key word search of the entire
database. User commentaries are also available.
Poetry
British
Women Romantic Poets, 1789-1832
The British Women Romantic Poet's Project at the University of
California, Davis "is producing an online scholarly archive consisting
of E-text editions of poetry by British and Irish women written between
1789 and 1832, a period traditionally known in English literary history
as the Romantic period." Many poets are little known or previously
unpublished.
The
Poetry
Archive
The Poetry Archives make available a large number of poems which are
out of copyright. This extensive collection may be either searched or
browsed by author.
The
Academy of American Poets
This is the site of the American Academy of Poets. It includes a
searchable data base of poets and poetry as well as the opportunity to
listen to many poems read. The site also includes the ability to access
links enlarged text.
Representative
Poetry Online
This outstanding site, hosted by the English Department of the
University of Toronto, is a treasure trove of information about English
poetry from Old English to the modern. It is possible to search the 400
poets by name, their 2,500 poems by title or first line, or a key word
search of the database. Also, the site provides a glossary of poetic
terms as well as a time line of the poetry.
Poetry
This part of the University of Washington’s excellent site gives the
visitor an easy to navigate and extensive list of poetry from Maya
Angelou and Robert Browning to Walt Whitman and William Wordsworth.
Browseable and very accessible.
Specialty Sites
Book Share
Created by Benetech (formerly Arkenstone), Bookshare.org is an online
community that enables people with visual and other print disabilities
to legally share scanned books. There are many people who routinely usa
a computer to scan a book or other text into machine-readable form.
Coverting a book in this way can take up to several hours.
Bookshare.org takes advantage of a special exemption in the U.S.
copyright law that permits the reproduction of publications into
specialized formats for the disabled. Bookshare.org believes that
disabled people all across the United States wanting to read the same
text needlessly repeat many hours of work. The Bookshare.org initiative
seeks to maximize the efficiency of this process by making a work
scanned by only one or a few people available to thousands of people
instantly. Users must be able to submit proof of a print-related
disability.
Web Braille
Web-Braille is an Internet, web-based service that provides, in an
electronic format, many braille books and all braille magazines
produced by the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically
Handicapped (NLS). The Web-Braille site is password-protected and all
files are in an electronic form of grade 2 braille, a format requiring
the use of special equipment for access. Web-Braille contains the full
text of thousands of NLS-produced braille books and all braille
magazines currently produced by NLS. Copyright laws require that access
to Web-Braille be limited to NLS patrons and eligible institutions.
Access outside the United States, except to eligible American citizens,
is not permitted.
PROJECT GUTENBERG
One of the best known sites for online texts is Project Gutenberg. Its
extensive list of free books may be either browsed or searched by
author or title. Like some other sites, you may have to download text
as zip files, so, if you are not familiar with the process, you should
read the FAQ page.
LibriVox
LibriVox provides free audio books from the public domain. There are
several options for listening, including MP3 files or from pod casting.
LibriVox plans to read all the books in the public domain. There are
also many links to other sites where you can hear free books.
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