ARCHIVES AND INDEXES
General --
Non-English 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
non-English 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.
-
Google Book Search (page images of 2,000,000+ fully readable public domain books, plus many more copyrighted books available via excerpts and snippets)
-
HathiTrust (1,000,000+ freely readable books, and additional search-only titles, from Google and elsewhere)
-
Internet Archive Ebooks and Texts (2,000,000+ items, page images and some transcriptions)
-
Project Gutenberg (over 30,000 items, mostly book transcriptions)
-
University of Michigan Digital General Collection (page images from 28,000+ books scanned for preservation purposes)
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 various 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 and Institutions --
Agriculture --
Architecture --
Art and Crafts --
Audio --
Blacks --
Books, Printing, and Publishing --
Children --
Computing --
Dissertations --
Drama --
Economics --
Folklore --
Historical --
Home Economics --
Literary --
Military --
Music and Dance --
New Original Works --
Philosophy --
Poetry --
Politics, Government, Law --
Portable Reader Editions --
Regional --
Religion --
Science, Technology, Social Science and Math --
Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror --
Serials --
Sports, Games and Recreation --
Textbooks and Instructional Materials --
Women
Some presses have put a substantial number of free online books
on their site, and at least one academic institution
now has a substantial number of books online by its scholars.
They are listed below.
This section includes general or wide-area historical archives and
indexes. For sites that focus on a particular country, state, or
region, see the regional section.
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.
- Feedbooks (thousands of public domain titles in EPub, Mobi, Kindle, and other formats)
- Manybooks.net (over 25,000 titles formatted for PDAs, Kindles, Iphones, and other devices)
- 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.
Books concerning various regions can also be found
in general resources in the historical section.
- Africa:
- General and multinational:
- South Africa:
- Asia:
- Europe:
- General and multinational:
- Belgium:
- Hungary:
- Ireland:
- Poland:
- United Kingdom:
- North and Central America:
- Canada:
- Caribbean Area:
- United States:
- General:
- US regions:
- US states:
- Alabama:
- Arizona:
- Colorado:
- Connecticut:
- Florida:
- Georgia:
- Hawaii:
- Illinois:
- Kansas:
- Kentucky:
- Louisiana:
- Mississippi:
- New Jersey:
- New York:
- North Carolina:
- Ohio:
- Oregon:
- Vermont:
- Wyoming:
- Oceania:
- South America:
The following are some major directories of open-access serials.
See also our
own serials listings.
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Edited by John Mark Ockerbloom (onlinebooks@pobox.upenn.edu)
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