Every year schools around the world spend thousands of dollars on textbooks that are often outdated by the end of their first year in the classroom. Ebooks, many of them free, can represent huge savings for schools over purchasing textbooks. Here are seven places that you can find free ebooks.
1. Planet eBook is a free service where teachers and students can find classic literature titles available as free downloads. Planet eBook adds new titles at regular intervals. Subscribe to the Planet eBook blog or newsletter to keep track of the latest additions to the collection. For browsing purposes, Planet eBook offers previews of titles through the Issuu pdf publishing service. Using the previews students can get an overview of a title without committing to downloading the entire ebook.
2. E-Books Directory contains nearly 1700 titles. The E-Books Directory provides freely downloadable textbooks, documents, and lecture notes. You can search the directory by keyword or browse through hundreds of categories.
3. Science Books Online is a directory of free ebooks for all areas of science. The books range from small PDF pamphlets to full-length texts made available in electronic form for free. Most of the materials have to be downloaded in order to be viewed but there are some materials that you can view directly within your browser.
4. Free Book-s is a search engine that scans many collections of ebooks to find free content that matches your search. I gave Free Book-s a test drive using academic terms like "physics" and terms like "fly fishing" to see what kids of results would be generated. In both cases I found Free Book-s returned very relevant results.
5. BookServer is a search engine for finding, borrowing, downloading, and purchasing books in digital form. A search on BookServer will yield results listing both free ebooks and ebooks for sale.
6. Flat World Knowledge provides free textbooks created by experts in various academic fields. A quick look at the "find my class" section of Flat World Knowledge reveals that these textbooks are being used in few dozen colleges across the United States.
7. Google Books hosts thousands of books that are in the public domain. Many of the public domain books can be viewed and downloaded in their entirety for free. To find public domain books go into the advanced search options and select the "public domain only" and "full text" options to find free full-length books.
2. E-Books Directory contains nearly 1700 titles. The E-Books Directory provides freely downloadable textbooks, documents, and lecture notes. You can search the directory by keyword or browse through hundreds of categories.
3. Science Books Online is a directory of free ebooks for all areas of science. The books range from small PDF pamphlets to full-length texts made available in electronic form for free. Most of the materials have to be downloaded in order to be viewed but there are some materials that you can view directly within your browser.
4. Free Book-s is a search engine that scans many collections of ebooks to find free content that matches your search. I gave Free Book-s a test drive using academic terms like "physics" and terms like "fly fishing" to see what kids of results would be generated. In both cases I found Free Book-s returned very relevant results.
5. BookServer is a search engine for finding, borrowing, downloading, and purchasing books in digital form. A search on BookServer will yield results listing both free ebooks and ebooks for sale.
6. Flat World Knowledge provides free textbooks created by experts in various academic fields. A quick look at the "find my class" section of Flat World Knowledge reveals that these textbooks are being used in few dozen colleges across the United States.
7. Google Books hosts thousands of books that are in the public domain. Many of the public domain books can be viewed and downloaded in their entirety for free. To find public domain books go into the advanced search options and select the "public domain only" and "full text" options to find free full-length books.
5 comments:
Project Gutenberg is great for literature.
"Project Gutenberg is the place where you can download over 30,000 free ebooks to read on your PC, iPhone, Kindle, Sony Reader or other portable device. "
http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page
I agree with modelnoir. Project Gutenberg has been around since 1971. many of their books are available in multiple formats from txt to the open source eReader format, ePub.
A list with links to over 400 free and open textbooks is available from the Community College Open Textbook Collaborative at http://collegeopentextbooks.org/textbooks/textbooksbysubject.html.
Taking a look at the free ebook, The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age ... http://bit.ly/8FTT5l
MIT has lots of good ebook resources, too!
All organizations listed are doing great work.
Here's an update on Flat World Knowledge (FWK) http://flatworldknowledge.com. Flat World Knowledge is a venture-backed startup that has, in just 11 short months, had almost 500 HUNDRED colleges and universities adopt its professionally developed free textbooks. There's reason why FWK is by far the most successful of all open textbook providers, and is delivering free and otherwise affordable textbook content that meets the educational market in a way that it expects, and deserves.
I know some of the people there, and they are serious about changing the textbook publishing world for the better. It's their passion!
Just to use one example: the average Community College student in America spends *72%* of their annual cost for education on *textbooks*. Flat World Knowledge sees that as unacceptable.
Flat World Knowledge is the only organization listed that is *professionally developing* its eBooks *from scratch*. That's an important difference from the others.
The founders of Flat World Knowledge left the largest textbook publisher (Pearson) to fix what they perceived as a broken textbook market. They know what they're doing; they know how the textbook market *works*.
Flat World Knowledge is a bona fide *publishing* company; they sign only the best, peer-reviewed academic authors. They market their books just like the mega-textbook companies, but publish with an open license, and offer their great books for FREE,online in their entirety - with the free option to take notes on the content, and keep those notes private, or share them. This is a really cool feature! None of the other free eBook providers come close to the "real thing" like FWK does. And, they are growing their list form its current emphais on Business and Economics to eventually cover ALL General Education topics. They'll have a complete list within two years, so keep checking out their website.
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