FREE E-Resources
FREE ONLINE INFORMATION SOURCES ( E-BOOKS,E-JOURNALS ) -
Online information sources are referred to be free when access to the sources is not dependent on a subscription or membership in an organization or a publisher. Among the freely available online information sources following sites are identified. -
DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals): Address – (http://www.doaj.org/)
The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is website maintained by Lund University which lists open access journal. This directory provides links to 8115 journals covering all subjects and languages.
Project Gutenberg: Address – (http://promo.net/pg/)
Project Gutenberg offers over 40,000 free eBooks: choose among free e pub books, free kindle books, download them or read them online. It also provides advanced search facility by Author or by Title (words). Author wise list of e-books is available at http://www.promo.net/pg/authors.zip/ and Title wise list of e-books is available athttp://www.promo.net/pg/titles.zip and current list of e books is available as GUTINDEXALL at the FTP site at the University of North Carolina ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/GUTINDEXALL
University of Virginia’s E-Book Library ( http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/ebooks/ebooklist.html )
In this site 1,600 e-books are publicly available online. It includes British and American fiction, major authors, children’s literature, the Bible, Shakespeare, American history, African-American documents and much more.
This site provides access to free fictions,tutorials, marketing and business e-books as well as resources to aid in promoting e-books.E-books can be downloaded.
This site provides hundreds of links to e-books and manuscripts, historical documents and literature and much more
This site now has over 20,000 e-book titles available. A Middle East collection of approximately 100 full-text books and maps is now available for free online viewing.
Electronic Books (http://www.geocities.com/ghosh_tbd/inf3.html )
This section provides link of some organizations and universities who have taken initiatives
to provide free access to thousands of online e-books free of charges.
Free Online Dictionaries
Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (http://foldoc.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/index.html)
Internet Picture Dictionary (http://www.pdictionary.com/)
Free Online Databases, Encyclopaedias -
Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia (http://www.wikipedia.org/ )
Wikipedia is a multilingual project to create a complete and accurate free content encyclopedia. It was started in January 2001 and is currently working on 168375 articles in the English version.
It is internet’s premiere free encyclopaedia, that provides users with more than 57,000 frequently updated articles from the Columbia Encyclopaedia, Ed. 6. Each article is enhanced with links to articles of newspapers and magazines, pictures and maps.
Internet Public Library (IPL) Address - www.ipl.org.
The IPL originated at the University of Michigan’s School of Information. The Internet Public Library (IPL, ipl2) is a non-profit, largely student-run website at Drexel University. Visitors can ask a reference question. Volunteer librarians and graduate students in library and information science form collections and answer questions. Ask an IPL Librarian is very good service provide by this website for online document delivery regarding the users specific needs.
US Patent Full-Text and Full-Page Image Database ( http://uspto.gov/patft )
This database contains two parts i.e. (1) Patent Grants Database and (2) Patent Applications Database. Patent Grants Database includes full-text since 1976 and full-images since 1790. Patent Application Database is being published since 15th March, 2001. The databases are having following searching facilities: Quick search, Advanced Search, Patent number search (In case of Patent Grant Database),Application Number Search ( In case of Patent application Database)
ERIC Database (http://askeric.org/Eric/ )
ERIC is the world’s largest source of education information, with more than one million abstracts of documents and journal articles on education research and practice. Within the ERIC Collection, you will find records for: journal articles, books, research syntheses, conference papers, technical reports, policy papers.
Databases (http://www.geocities.com/ghosh_tbd/dbase.html)
Near about 29 databases are available free of charge. Out of which following are the most
important ones.
AGRICOLA (Agriculture Online Access) http://www.nal.usda.gov/ag98
It is maintained by the National Agricultural Library (NAL). It contains two parts i.e. (1) Online Public Access Catalogue (OPAC) for Books and (2) Journal articles, book chapters, short reports and reprints selected primarily from the resources described in books etc. There are three ways of searching i.e. (1) Search and browse (2) Keyword search (3) Advanced keyword search.
Earthquake Engineering Abstracts ( http://www.eerc.berkeley.edu )
This database is maintained by the National Information Service for Earthquake Engineering (NISEE), University of California, Berkeley. This database contains 96,000 abstracts. A maximum of 200 records will be displayed on any individual search.UnCover Database ( http://uncweb.carl.org/ )
The UnCover service has now been integrated to Ingenta’s http://www.ingenta.co full text delivery service. The contents and abstracts are available free of charges. It contains 12,087,668 articles and 26,529 publications
Other Electronic Encyclopedias –
The following electronic encyclopedias are available for a free trial on their websites:
Encyclopedia Britannica (http://www.eb.com/)
Grolier’s Encyclopedia (http://gme.grolier.com/
World Book Encyclopedia (http://www.worldbook.com/)
Free Virtual Libraries
National Library of Medicine Gateway (http://gatway.nlm.gov/gw/Cmd)
The NLM Gateway allows users to search in multiple retrieval systems at the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM). The current Gateway searches MEDLINE/ Pubmed, OLDMEDLINE, LOCATOR plus, MEDLINE plus, DIRLINE, AIDS Meetings, Health Service research Meetings, Space Life sciences Meetings, and HSRProj.
Libraries-Virtual Libraries-Digital Libraries (http://www.geocities.com/ghosh_tbd/lib.html)
In this section reputed libraries all over the world, different digital libraries and virtual libraries are linked. Among all the libraries following are the most important ones.
World Libraries on the World Wide Web ( http://www.123world.com/libraries/index.html#t )
It provides ultimate source of authentic and reliable information about 137 of libraries of the world on the net. This list of libraries includes the link of public libraries, research libraries, state libraries, national archives, libraries of different educational institutions, agricultural and technical libraries, business libraries, science libraries, and IMF libraries all over the world. It is arranged in alphabetical order.
Digital Library of Virginia Tech ( Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University ): (http://scholar.lib.vt.edu )
It provides (1) Scholarly Publishing services including E-journals, Electronic theses & dissertations, news, reports, survey database and Virginia Tech Publications and (2) Library Services and Archives including E-reserves, special collections, manuscripts, rare books, University archives and searching digital library and archives.
Digital Library: University of California : ( http://elib.cs.berkeley.edu )
The University of California, Berkeley Digital Library Project is a part of Digital Libraries Initiative, sponsored by the National Science Foundation and many others. It provides quick access of the collection, overview of the collection, image retrieval by image content, document image analysis and distributed search.
Australian Virtual Engineering Library ( http://avel.edu.au )
It provides Australian Digital Theses, ENGINE Database from IEAust, SciTech Library Newsletter and Full Text Papers on Biomedicine & Biotechnology, informatics, Nanotechnology, Robotics, Solar Energy, Sustainable Development, Chemical , Civil, Electrical, Environmental and Mechanical and Mining Engineering, Computer Science & I.T. and Engineering Education.
Virtual Libraries ( http://vlib.org )
This site contains the link of the virtual libraries on Agriculture, Business and Economics, computing, Communication and Media, Education, Engineering, Humanities, Information & Libraries, International Affairs, Law, Recreation, Regional Studies, Science and Society. It provides alphabetical listing and keyword search facilities.
Other virtual libraries -
Free Management Library (http://www.managementhelp.org/)
Environmental Virtual Library (http://earthsystems.org/virtuallibrary/vhome.html )
Virtual Library of Energy (http://www/crest.org/index.html)
Marketing Virtual Library (http://www.knowthis.com/)
Education Virtual Library (http://www.byu.edu/ipt/vlibrary/)
Free Online Catalogues -
Now most of the publishers have online catalogues of their publications on their own website and some publishers also provide the facilities for online ordering of the publication.
Amazon.com - Online Book Supplier (www.amazon.com)
Library of Congress – Library (http://catalog.loc.gov/)
Prentice Hall of India Pvt. Ltd.- Publisher (www.phindia.com)
Tata McGraw-Hill Publishing Company Ltd. – (www.tatamcgrawhill.com )
ONLINE THESES AND DISSERTATIONS
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD)
It is an international organization dedicated to promoting the adoption, creation, use, dissemination, and preservation of electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs). We support electronic publishing and open access to scholarship in order to enhance the sharing of knowledge worldwide. Our website includes resources for university administrators, librarians, faculty, students, and the general public. Topics include how to find, create, and preserve ETDs; how to set up an ETD program; legal and technical questions; and the latest news and research in the ETD community.
Vidyanidhi (Meaning 'Treasure of Knowledge' in Sanskrit) is India's premier Digital library initiative to facilitate the creation, archiving and accessing of doctoral theses and dissertations.