ARCHIVES AND INDEXES
General --
Foreign Language --
Specialty
There's a vast range of online literature beyond what we index individually
on The Online Books Page. Below we list some of the major sources and
indexes of free online texts, in all languages, both general and specialized.
These are large, general-purpose collections with substantial English-language
listings. For archives that mainly carry other languages, see the
foreign languages archive listings.
We break these out into categories:
Large-scale repositories --
Significant indexes and search aids --
Significant smaller-scale archives
These are big collections of texts, big enough to act as small library-like
collections in their own right. The threshold for inclusion here may rise
over time. Listed alphabetically.
The sites below primarily provide
search engines, indexes or useful link lists for finding online books.
Everything else we see worth listing that doesn't fit in
more specialized categories.
Tyler Chambers's iLoveLanguages site
has a comprehensive listing of foreign language and
literature resources. The University of Virginia's
Western European Literature listing also lists a number of major
collections in languages other than English. For text and teaching materials
in less common languages, see UCLA's Language Materials Project.
See also these archives:
These are listed by category:
Academic Presses --
Agriculture --
Architecture --
Art and Crafts --
Audio --
Blacks --
Books, Printing, and Publishing --
Children --
Computing --
Dissertations --
Drama --
Economics --
Historical --
Home Economics --
Literary --
Military --
Music and Dance --
New Original Works --
Philosophy --
Poetry --
Politics, Government, Law --
Portable Reader Editions --
Religion --
Science, Technology, Social Science and Math --
Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror --
Serials --
Sports, Games and Recreation --
Textbooks and Instructional Materials --
Women
The following presses have put a substantial number of free online books
on their site.
-
1st-Hand-History Foundation (18th and 19th century texts, mostly northwestern US and American Indian history)
-
The American Colonist's Library (primary sources for early US history)
-
American Journeys: Eyewitness Accounts of Early American Exploration and Settlement (at Wisconsin)
-
American Memory (historical texts and other media: Library of Congress)
-
Antislavery Literature (historic and contemporary slavery narratives and commentary; at eserver.org)
-
Archives of The West (historical texts supplementing the PBS mini-series)
-
Australian Literary and Historical Texts (at U-Sydney)
-
British History Online (digital library of medieval and modern British history)
-
British Library Treasures in Full (digitizations of historically significant works)
-
Buffalo Full Text (index of online books related to Buffalo, NY and vicinity)
-
CARTAH Electronic Text archive (historical texts on Romania and vicinity)
-
CELT Project (Irish electronic texts)
-
Center of Military History (historical books and documents by the US Army)
-
Corvinus Library (Hungarian historical books)
-
De Re Militari (medieval military history)
-
Disability History Museum Library (books, images, and other artifacts)
-
Documenting the American South (at UNC)
-
Documents in Military History (300+ historical documents at Hillsdale)
-
Dumbarton Oaks Electronic Texts (Byzantine studies, Pre-Columbian Studies, and History of Landscape Architecture)
-
Early Americas Digital Archive (at Maryland)
-
Early Canadiana Online (2000+ texts in English and French)
-
eHistory Books (about 20 books, mostly in US history)
-
ETANA Core Texts (Near Eastern text archive; at Case Western)
-
Eighteenth Century E-Text (index at Rutgers)
-
Etexts in Irish and Connecticut History (at Quinnipiac)
-
Exploring Ancient World Cultures (at Evansville)
-
Fourth World Documentation Project (Indigenous studies; at cwis.org)
-
Historical Directories (local and trade directories for England and Wales, 1750-1919)
-
Historical Colorado Newspapers (75+ local papers from 19th-century Colorado)
-
Historical Text Archive (at Mississippi State)
-
History of Economic Thought Archives (at McMaster)
-
History of Gems, Gemology, and Mining Library (at farlang.com)
-
The Internet Classics Archive (Greek and Roman texts)
-
Internet Medieval Sourcebook (at Fordham)
-
Internet Modern History Sourcebook (at Fordham)
-
Kansas Collection (regional historical resources)
-
Kentuckiana Digital Library E-Texts (at kyvl.org)
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LacusCurtius: Into the Roman World (history of ancient Rome: at Kansas)
-
Libro (Iberian historical resources, at the Univ. of Central Arkansas)
-
The Luminarium (medieval - 17th century English literature)
-
Making of America (mid-19th century American texts)
-
Manx Note Book (with full texts on the history of the Isle of Man)
-
Mardos Memorial Library of On-Line Books and Maps (US local histories and genealogical aids)
-
Memoria Chilena (Chilean historical books and other materials in Spanish)
-
Memoria Project (Czech history; in Czech and Latin)
-
Mountain Men Diaries, Narratives, and Letters (at xmission.com)
-
National Park Service History Online Books (at nps.gov)
-
Nineteenth Century Schoolbooks (at Pitt)
-
North Carolina History and Fiction Digital Library (at ecu.edu)
-
Online Library of the Southern Campaign of the American Revolution (by Jogn Robertson)
-
Online Medieval and Classical Library (at omacl.org)
-
ORB Library (medieval texts)
-
Our Roots / Nos Racines: Canada's Local Histories Online (in French and English)
-
Perseus Project (classical Greek texts in translation; at Tufts)
-
Renascence Editions (16th-18th century texts, ed. by Richard Bear)
-
Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Collection (thousands of pamphlets at Cornell)
-
Steam Engine Library (at Rochester)
-
Victorian Women Writers Project (at Indiana)
-
Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1820-1940 (at Binghamton)
-
Women Working, 1870-1930 (at Harvard)
-
World War I Document Archive (at BYU)
- Yizkor Books (Holocaust memorial books; at NYPL)
See also historical (for literature from a
certain period),
and new original works (for web-published literature)
and poetry.
For literary criticism, the Internet Public Library's
Online Literary Criticism
Collection is a good starting point.
These archives have substantial collections of material that has been first
published
first on the Net, or that appeared on the Web shortly after their
original publication. See also
the Open Directory's Online Writing links, which include
pointers to many such archives, large and small, of varying quality.
- Manybooks.net (over 10,000 titles formatted for PDAs and Web browsers)
- Microsoft Reader Free eBooks (for PocketPC and Windows platforms; for-pay books also offered)
- PalmPilot E-Text Ring (80+ sites featuring free or for-pay texts formatted for Palm readers)
- Qvadis Library (free texts in proprietary Palm format; requires purchase of reader software)
- A few sites make many of their titles available in popular formats
for portable devices, as well as standard Web formats. Notable sites in this category include
the Baen Free Library.
The following are some major directories of open-access serials.
See also our
own serials listings.
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The Inside Story
Edited by John Mark Ockerbloom (onlinebooks@pobox.upenn.edu)
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