eBooks, eTexts & Readers
This comprehensive list of online resources for eBooks is mainly free with a few having a fee structure. At the end of this list, there is reference to software that can convert digital text to an audio file. Other software includes “free” readers for the PC and Mac that can be used by students to read curriculum material and the web independently in addition to proofreading their writing.
eBooks & eTexts
| Website | Description |
|---|---|
| Abacci Books | Free digital text versions of classic literature – with reviews! Searchable by author, book title or category. |
| Accessible Book Collection (fee-based) | The Accessible Book Collection is a non-profit corporation that provides high interest/low reading level digital text to qualified persons with disabilities. Government, non-profit schools and others can subscribe to the Accessible Book Collection for all eligible students for one low price. |
| Alex: A Catalog of Electronic Texts | Free eBooks of American and English Literature. |
| Assistive Media | Provides free of charge copyright-approved, high caliber audio literary works to the world-wide disability community. |
| Audible (fee based) | Download the audio of thousands of books to your computer and burn a CD or download an audio file for your MP3 player. |
| Bibliomania | Thousands of free books accessible to the visually or print impaired using screen readers and speech synthesizers. Includes study guides of many books. |
| BiblioVault (fee based) | A repository of 14,000 academic and university press titles. The BiblioVault assists accessibility offices at institutions of higher learning, by providing access to books for students who have disabilities which prevent them from using these books in printed form. |
| Bookshare (fee-based) | A depository of thousands of books that have been scanned for K-12. |
| Children’s Books Online (fee based) | The largest collection of illustrated antique children's books on line in multiple languages. |
| Children’s Literature Web Guide | Wonderful site of children’s literature available to read or download from the University of Calgary. |
| Classic Reader | The site claims 3061 complete books or stories by 320 authors. |
| Complete Works of William Shakespeare | Maintained by MIT, Shakespeare’s plays are arranged in three categories: tragedy, comedy, or history. |
| Digital Book Index | Digital Book Index provides links to more than 137,000 title records from more than 1800 commercial and non-commercial publishers, universities, and various private sites. About 97,000 of these books, texts, and documents are available free, while many others are available at very modest cost. |
| eBook Mall (fee based) | A commercial eBook site that offers over 100,000 eBooks in ten different formats. |
| ebooks.com – The digital bookstore (fee based) | An eBook site with thousands of popular, professional and academic ebooks. |
| Electronic Text Center at University of Virginia | Over 2,100 publicly-available ebooks from the University of Virginia Library's Etext Center, including classic British and American fiction, major authors, children's literature, American history, Shakespeare, African-American documents, the Bible, and much more. 70,000 texts, mostly online, including history, literature, philosophy, religion, history of science. |
| eReader (fee based) | The largest e-book store on the web. |
| The eText Archive | Eclectic subject matter available to download as e-text. |
| Fictionwise (free and fee-based) | Free eBooks or you can purchase eBooks (all eBooks are stored on your personal Bookshelf, where you can download them as needed). |
| FreeLoad Press | FreeLoad Press publishes and distributes premium textbooks from the best authors in their respective fields. They deliver textbooks using an innovative combination of commercial support and direct fulfillment. This allows them to provide the textbook as a free e-book. |
| Internet Archive | Search through 7 archives for books that are searchable by author, title, subject or keyword. |
| Great Books Online - The Bartleby Library | Bartleby Library publishes the classics of literature, nonfiction, and reference at a cost of $1 per book. |
| KidSpace @ The Internet Public Library | Links to picture books, short stories, poetry, myths, fables, magazines, and information about authors. |
| LearnOutLoud | Over 500 free audio and video titles. This directory features free audio books, lectures, speeches, sermons, interviews, and many other Browse over 15,000 educational audio books, MP3 downloads, podcasts, and videos. Most audio titles can be downloaded in digital formats such as MP3 and most video titles are available to stream online. |
| LibriVox | LibriVox provides free audiobooks from the public domain. |
| Literature Online from Chadwyck (fee based) | Literature Online contains over 350,000 fully-searchable works of poetry, prose and drama, alongside a vast library of criticism and reference resources. |
| Making of America | Making of America (MOA) is a digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction. The collection currently contains approximately 8,500 books and 50,000 journal articles with 19th century imprints. |
| National Library Service for the Blind and Handicapped | From the Library of Congress site, a free library program of Braille and audio books and materials. |
| Microsoft Reader Collection | A directory of free ebooks, reference books and literature that can be used with Microsoft Reader. |
| Perseus Project | An impressive, searchable primary text collection of classical works in English translation created by Tufts University. |
| Project Gutenberg | Light literature (such as Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, or Aesop’s Fables); heavy literature (such as Moby Dick or Paradise Lost); references (such as almanacs, encyclopedias, or dictionaries) in downloadable formats. |
| Questia (fee based) | Questia, the world’s largest online library, allows users to read and search an extensive collection of some 70,000 scholarly books and journals via the Internet. Users are also able to search, view, and mark up the complete text of books, as well as automatically create footnotes and bibliographies, hyperlink from source to source, highlight, and bookmark a text. |
| Read Print | A free online library that offers thousands of free books for students, teachers, and the classic enthusiast. |
| Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic (fee-based) | RFB&D is a well-known national nonprofit organization that has offered books on tape but now offers books in digital audio format. |
| Rosetta Books (fee-based) | Rosetta Books offers affordable eBooks in a variety of formats including MS Reader, Adobe Reader, Palm Digital and MobiPocket. |
| The Electronic Text Center | An extensive listing of approximately 70,000 on- and off-line humanities texts in thirteen languages, with more than 350,000 related images. |
| The National Academies Press (NAP) | NAP was created by the National Academies to publish the reports issued by the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Medicine, and the National Research Council. It now offers over 3000 books free, entirely on-line and in full text format. |
| The Online Books Page | Listing over 25,000 free books on the Web. |
| Tumblebooks | TumbleBook Library is an online collection of animated, talking picture books which teach young children the joys of reading in a format they'll love. |
| Unabridged | Unabridged provides narrated digital audio books for individuals who live in Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, New Hampshire, or Oregon, and who happen to be blind or visually challenged. Audio books can be enjoyed on PCs with Windows Media Player, or the content can be transferred to portable CD or MP3 players. |
Readers
| Website | Description |
|---|---|
| Text Aloud | Would you like to take digital text and convert it to an MP3 or Windows Media file? Then take a look at Text Aloud, “The World’s Most Popular Text to Speech Tool.” A free download is available to try it out before you buy. |
| ReadPlease 2003 (free reader) |
This basic reader can support fluency and reading comprehension with its highlighting feature as it reads. There are free voice downloads in British English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish. ReadPlease Plus 2003 has additional features with options to purchase natural voices. |
| Natural Reader (free reader) |
This reader with highlighted text reads MSWord files, text files, Adobe PDF files, web pages and emails where you can change the voice, volume and speed. Natural Reader Professional and Enterprise versions can also be purchase that offer natural voices. |
| HELPRead (free reader) |
This software also comes with a set of tutorials. |
| HearIt for the Mac (free reader) |
This program uses the MacIntalk or PlainTalk voices to read highlighted text in almost any application. |
Feel free to suggest additional sites. Email us at khm@edtech-associates.com or use our contact form.