Literature

This site is one of the best loved literature portals on the internet. It was voted one of the top 300 websites in the World by Forbes magazine. It has thousands of e-books, poems, articles, short stories and plays, all of which are absolutely free.

http://www.bibliomania.com/

The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and the largest library in the world by number of items cataloged. Over 200 million items from many countries in over 30 subject areas.

https://www.bl.uk/subjects

The Center for the Book provided by the U.S. Library of Congress (LOC) provides users with free, immediate access to dozens of classic ebooks, booklists geared towards different age groups and for different genres, author webcasts, local resources, and more. The site also links visitors to an eReference page with frequently asked questions as well as a live chat service and to the LOC's collections, which contain more than 160 million items - books, photographs, manuscripts, recordings, electronic resources, and more - in both digital and physical form.

http://read.gov/cfb/

Fiction.us is a great place to find free online novels. Just as the website name says, this site contains lots of fiction books including many award-winning books. The books are split into chapters, so it's easy to remember where you left off. The site also offers poetry, plays and picture books.

https://www.fiction.us/

The Internet Archive is a non-profit, 501(c)(3), who’s mission is to “provide Universal Access to All Knowledge”. All works provided are on the website are free for users to access. The Archive enables users to access and download the digital materials freely or by “checking out” the object with their available software. Currently, the Archive provides access to the following: 475 billion web pages; 28 million books and texts; 14 million audio recordings (including 220,000 live concerts); 6 million videos (including 2 million Television News programs); 3.5 million images; and 580,000 software programs. Texts available for free download can either be viewed online or downloaded in the users preferred format, e.g., pdf, kindle, epub, full text, etc. Likewise, the majority of works provided by the Internet Archive are in the public domain and could potentially be added to a library’s OPAC. However, extensive coordination with the Internet Archive would need to occur for this content migration to take place.

https://archive.org/

Internet Archive: Digital Library of Free & Borrowable Books, Movies, Music & Wayback Machine. (n.d.). Retrieved April 14, 2021, from https://archive.org/

This collection is a holding of a few hundred subcollections accessible from the Library of Congress. The collections consist of materials in a variety of formats and across over 60 subjects.

https://www.loc.gov/collections/

The Literature Network offers access to searchable online literature for students, teachers, and those passionate about the subject. The site currently has over 3500 books and over 4400 short stories and poems by more than 260 authors. Additionally, the site offers forums for users to engage and share with over 71,000 other members. Works are free and available to view online only, and are not available for download. As such, integration into a library’s OPAC would not be feasible at this time and a link to the Literature Network website may be listed under the library’s additional resources if desired.

http://www.online-literature.com/

The Literature Network: Online classic literature, poems, and quotes. Essays & Summaries. (n.d.). Retrieved April 14, 2021, from http://www.online-literature.com/

Luminarium is a comprehensive anthology and guide to English literature of the Middle Ages, Renaissance, Seventeenth Century, Restoration and Eighteenth Century. It’s a collective encyclopedic project that first started in 2001 to provide historical contexts for the people, places, and events featured on the site with the intent of being a site of the Who's Who and What's What in Medieval and Renaissance England. Some of the main categories include: Medieval, Renaissance, Seventeenth Century, Eighteenth Century (Restoration), Religious Writers, Ren Drama, Metaphysical Poets, Cavalier Poets, and the Encyclopedia Project. The site contains files, text, encyclopedia entries, and links suggestions for further reading. Items are either able to be read in-browser, are linked to outside sources that are free (like Google Books), or sometimes linked to further resources that are not free. Though the site was last updated in 2012, the historical information is vast and reliable.

http://www.luminarium.org/

Luminarium: Anthology of English Literature (n.d.). Retrieved April, 14, 2021, from http://www.luminarium.org/

With more than 29,000 free eBooks, you're bound to find one that interests you. Patrons have the option to browse by most popular titles, recent reviews, authors, titles, genres, languages, and more.

https://manybooks.net/

This on-line project is part of Internet Archive, a non-profit organization. OpenLibrary is an accessible, open source database that has an editable library catalog. Includes an entry for every book added by users, with a goal of having an entry for every book ever published.

http://openlibrary.org/

Project Gutenberg identifies itself as “an online library of free eBooks.” The mission of the project is “to encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks.” The collection consists of over 30,000 items covering a variety of topics and interests, with works being either fiction or nonfiction in nature.

http://www.gutenberg.org/