Dayton Metro Library. Finding ebooks Online. Your guide to finding books to read on your computer or handheld device. Introduction

Transcription

1 Dayton Metro Library Finding ebooks Online Your guide to finding books to read on your computer or handheld device Introduction If you (or your child) ever have to read a classic novel (or just want to for fun) and you find that the library is out of the title, don t despair! As long as you have an internet connection, there are MANY websites out there that allow you to down-load books in different formats to read on your computer or on your portable device. There are even some that offer free audio books. We ve collected web addresses of some of the best sites offering you ebook versions of traditional print books, mostly classics, that you can read for free or collect on your hard drive creating your own virtual library!

2 Finding ebooks Online Page 2 But First... How to read an ebook There are several different ways to read these ebooks: Read the book in your browser window. The book s text is a webpage you view like you would any other website. This is probably the easiest to use, if not the easiest on the eyes. RTF or TXT or DOC files for downloading. You save the files to your computer and read them using Microsoft Word or Wordpad. Some portable devices will store and display these too. PDF files (Portable Document File) are files you can download or read online. They are viewable on PCs or Macs. You can also read them on some phones as well as Kindle and Sony devices. Adobe Digital Editions software (available for free) helps you manage, download, and read PDF and EPUB files. (Available online at the library) PRC files for the Mobipocket reader. The reader is downloadable for free in versions for desktops, PDAs, most phones, and other handheld devices. (Also available online at the library). Some sites offer only one way to read, others offer many. Dayton Metro Library overdrive.daytonmetrolibrary.org Dayton Metro Library has downloadable content that you can check out just like the items you check out in your local branch. There are audio books that you can listen to on your computer or portable devices. There are ebooks you can read on your computer or handheld using Adobe software or MobiPocket reader. There are even movies that you can download to your computer. All for free no overdue fines ever!

3 Page 3 Dayton Metro Library Other Libraries to Download Outside of the library there are plenty of sites that offer free ebooks. However, some will bombard you with ads and some are just scams. THESE sites are all safe. The first five have no ads. Both lists that follow are in order of preference, that is, the ones we think have the most to offer are at the top of each list: Sites Without Ads 1) Thousands of public domain and new author books in EPUB, PDF, and Mobipocket formats. Site is easy to search and files are quick and easy to download. Nicely organized with every type of book available. 2) 30,000 free books. Through their partners and affiliates (links page) there are 100,000 others. Search or browse, including advanced searches. Also there are bookshelves that collect similar books you can look through. Sci Fi and Fantasy shelves are amazing. If you so desire you can even help them out by digitizing other public domain books. 3) Walking you through the content on this website could fill up twenty brochures. Books, movies, music, software, video lectures you can spend the rest of your life exploring here. 1,250,000+ books in the American Libraries section and another quarter of a million in the Canadian Libraries. You can enter a title in the search box & you might get lucky. Browsing is a bit harder. For many of the books there is an awesome interface that looks like turning pages on your screen. (Test it: search Scarecrow of Oz & click on the fourth title down. Click on the read online link at the left. Here s the 1915 edition scanned page by page from New York Public Lib.). You can also download the books in various formats. What is available depends on what format you search.

4 Finding ebooks Online Page 4 4) onlinebooks.library.upen.edu A collection of links to 35,000 free books on the web. Fiction, non-fiction (on every subject,) and poetry. Some are even illustrated. The links may direct you to other sites. You can browse by author or title or subject; but because the list is broken up into pages, you may have to click through several pages to find your author (or title). I had to click through 8 pages of E s to get to Eliot. In various formats (it depends on the site you re directed to). 5) manybooks.net Browse by author, title, subject, genre, or language Over 26,000 free books usually with a picture of the cover. Several file types to download and read on your computer, also several to download to your handheld. Includes Kindle files and Sony Reader files too. Pick your title & tell it the format you want to download it in at the right. 6) planetbook.com Download the books in PDF & take them with you or read them on your desktop. Some are out of copyright in other countries & carry a warning (meaning they are still copyrighted in some parts of the world). 62 free ebook titles, all classics. Their goal is to offer a small collection high quality, nice looking files. Sites With Ads 1) Offers just classics (Dickens, Austen, etc) including children s (all Baum s Oz books.) Let s you pick your page color, your ink color and read it on your screen. Ads are mostly for the hardcopies of the books you are getting ready to read but they vanish once you enter your book.

5 Page 5 Dayton Metro Library 2) Plenty of books for you to read on your screen in reference, verse, fiction, and non-fiction. Bartleby s one drawback: the ads at the top and on the right side of every page Search or Browse by author title or subject. Includes the 70 volume Harvard Classics collection from 1917 (with titles like Dante s Divine Comedy & Austen s Pride & Prejudice some with interpretative essays). 3) Has text ads on some books but not all, so it isn t as distracting as Bartleby. You search lists that are alphabetical by title. Included are classics of fiction, plays by Shakespeare & others, children s books, collections of poetry, public domain non-fiction, science fiction, westerns, and collections of short stories. In short, if you know the exact title of the work you are looking for, don t mind ads, and want to read no-frills text on the screen of your computer this is the site for you. 4) Very similar to fullbooks.com, fewer titles but easier to find what you want to read on your screen. 5) Total no-frills read-in-your-browser collection of classics. Alphabetical list of titles (which misspells Jane Austen s name). There are ads until you get into the actual book text. 6) 5,000 free public domain books of fiction & non-fiction. The site forces you to use their interface which requires scrolling to see the whole page among other problems. There is an ad banner at the top of the page at all times & this can get annoying. That said, there is quite a bit here on one site.

6 Finding ebooks Online Page 6 Other Collections Sites For Modern Fiction 1) AMAZING: Sci Fi publisher Baen Books has put several books by each of its stable of authors up online for free download or online reading in a number of formats. If you read online, the website offers ability to change font and size of text. These are authors the likes of Niven, Norton, Bujold, Lackey, Saberhagen, and Turtledove. WOW! 2) Nice lady and self published author Jennifer Armstrong (you can read her novels here too) has scoured the net to find modern fiction in many genres for you to read or download. There are some great authors: Rudy Rucker (Sci Fi) Andrew Vachss (Thrillers) There is also quite a bit of drek. Some links send you to sites already mentioned above like Gutenberg.org. 3) LOTS of ads, but if you want something other than classics for free, here are some self published titles all types of Romances, some pretty racy. Specialized Collections 1) en.childrenslibrary.org The real deal when you are looking for children s books. Includes books from around the globe for ages 3-13 Nifty interface lets you read the picture books on screen and pick books by age level, contents or color of the cover! 2) Classical (ie. Greek, Roman, Arabic, Renaissance) rather than just classic. Offers searchable texts in dual languages and some neat tools for navigating the texts online.

7 Page 7 Dayton Metro Library 3) If you want to read the modern Judeo-Christian Bible online, you need no other website. 20 English Language versions with explanation and history of each plus an array of foreign language editions. Includes a search feature to search in the version of your choose for specific text. Similar site with different translations and different functionality: If you are looking for the oldest Judeo-Christian Bible with partial translations and all the corrections written in by the translators see: 4) Audio, video, image, and etext library for Buddhists of all sects. 300 full text books including children s picture books and chapter books as well as many titles for Buddhist families and books for adult study. Audio Books to Download 1) librivox.org A great collection that grows daily of free audio books recorded by volunteers. You can search by author, title, genre, reader and more. Often there are multiple recordings of titles and quality of reading does vary, but it s free! You can download the whole work or chapter by chapter. Some even have downloadable CD booklets to go with them. 2) etc.usf.edu/lit2go Kind of a poor cousin to librivox, but still some good recordings from this University of South Florida site. You can download or listen on your computer to books chapter by chapter (a bit annoying if the book has eighty chapters). Most include educational resources & full text of the print book too.

8 Finding ebooks Online Page 8 3) Nearly all of the titles on this site point to librivox recordings. The plus is that the site is nicely laid out and categorized by genre. It s also much prettier than librivox since it offers book covers of titles and sneak peeks in text. Ebook Search Engines : These sites actually DON T search for ebooks; they search for PDFs. That means though you want the book Animal Farm, you have to wade through hundreds of study guides, magazine articles, vide game guides, vacuum cleaner manuals...still, you might get lucky 1) mega-pdf.com 2) 3) search-pdf-books.com 4) Sites To Avoid: These sites just aren t worth your time. The only thing they offer not offered by the sites listed above is frustration. 1) worldebooklibrary.com/collections.htm 2) 3) pdfreebooks.org 4) (937) 463-BOOK (2665) ADS TC 03/10