Book Resources

Online book resources

Our main resource for the books we record is the Project Gutenberg. It has a huge catalog of public domain e-books, and they do extensive legal checking before releasing their titles. Generally, if it was published before 1923 in the USA, it's public domain in the US, which is good enough for us. Nevertheless, there are also other resources online which are listed here. But bear in mind that the book has to be in the public domain (see CopyrightAndPublicDomain). If you are in doubt, don't start recording until the copyright status is approved by an administrator.

General

• Project Gutenberg
• Bartleby.com
• Questia
• The University of Adelaide Library
• World Wide School
• Litrix
• Online Liberty Library
• PublicLiterature.org
• Wisdom Quest
• Wiki Source
• Virginia Online Etext Library
• Christian Classics Ethereal Library
• The Rare Book Room
• University of Adelaide E-Text Library
• Manybooks.net
• Google Books (only use books with full view; doesn't work for everyone outside U.S.)
• Live Search Books (only use books with full view; doesn't work for everyone outside U.S.)
• archive.org - texts: not indexed by Google, so well worth a search when nothing else has been found. Operates according to an odd mix of US and Canadian copyright law, depending on where the book-scans were done.

Distributed Proofreaders

Distributed Proofreaders acts as a creation source for Project Gutenberg by proofreading, through a network of volunteers, public domain works. Using the Project Search feature, you can sort by title, author, language, genre, etc.

Texts completed and posted to Project Gutenberg (and it is recommended you only use completed works due to the changable nature of works in progress) appear at the bottom of the sorted list(s). NOTE: You must create an account at Distributed Proofreaders to use this feature

Children's Literature

• Baldwin Project - all text is online and all works are in the public domain. The About This Text section for each book contains the public domain documentation.
• Children's Library offers many ways to search for books. Use the advanced search option for the easiest and quickest way to find what you are looking for!
• WorldWide School Books are grouped by genre on this page.
• Children's Books Online
• Classic Reader This site offers many different children's books, very helpful
• Children's books, scanned at the Internet Archive - need checking for PDness and completeness of book, but a great selection!

Non-English Languages

Warning: not all texts are pd in the US - please double check the date of first publication before starting to record. Text must be published before 1923 to be in the public domain in the USA.

• Bulgarian

• http://slovo.bg/authors.php3

• Dutch:

• http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/languages/nl
• http://www.dbnl.org/ (Warning: not all the texts are in the Public Domain)
• http://cf.hum.uva.nl/dsp/ljc/

• Finnish:

• http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/languages/fi

• French:

• http://gallica.bnf.fr/
• http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/languages/fr

• German:

• http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/
• http://www.zeno.org/Literatur/W/Inhaltsverzeichnis
• http://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Hauptseite
• http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/languages/de

• Hungarian:

• http://mek.oszk.hu/ (Warning: not all the texts are in the Public Domain)

• Latin:

• http://www.mythfolklore.net/
• http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/languages/la

• Romanian:

• http://www.bjbraila.ro/bjpi5ro/SITE/03%20Diverse/06%20fulltext/litstra.htm
• http://www.e-scoala.ro/biblioteca/index.html

• Russian:

• http://az.lib.ru/
• http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/languages/ru

• Spanish:

• http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/languages/es
• http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/

• Swedish:

• http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/languages/sv
• http://runeberg.org/
• http://www.svenskaakademien.se/web/Classics_1.aspx

Religious Literature

• Christian Classics Ethereal Library
• Sacred Texts
• World Invisible Library

Special Topics

• Literary Gothic:

• http://www.litgothic.com/

• Fables and Fairy and Folk Tales

• http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/
• http://www.mythfolklore.net/andrewlang/ All of Andrew Lang's text for the 12 Colour Fairy Books and http://www.mythfolklore.net/1001nights/ Text from 5 different authors of the 1001 nights.

• Female Authors:

• A Celebration of Women Authors: http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/

• Adventure fiction:

• 19th century adventure fiction: http://www.athelstane.co.uk

• The Union Catalog of Pre-1600 Books Online: http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/union This list of pre-1600-relevant books is taken from a number of online collections and at the time of adding link, contained 12,502 books.
• PD Novellas - Melville House - includes summaries, it's a print resource, but handy for getting ideas!
• Short Stories - short-stories.co.uk - need to check copyright / public domainness carefully, but a handy resource.
• Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy - The Avalon Project at Yale Law School (documents after 1923 will need a careful copyright check ... please don't start recording until this is agreed.)

Specific Authors

• Franz Kafka: http://www.kafka.org/index.php?english_transl
• Sarah Orne Jewett: http://www.public.coe.edu/~theller/soj/contents.htm
• Charlotte Mason: http://amblesideonline.org/CM/toc.html
• George MacDonald: http://www.george-macdonald.com/