Books Online (University of Toronto Libraries)

Books Online are books that have been digitized, from the University of Toronto Libraries. They are freely available online and out-of-copyright. The collection currently contains 858 titles. The full text of these books can be searched:

Search Books Online

Through their participation in the Open Content Alliance (OCA), a further 50,000 books have been digitized from the University of Toronto Libraries.

Search OCA collection

Directory of Open Access Books

Academic peer-reviewed books from 157 publishers

Internet Archive Text Archive

The Internet Archive Text Archive contains a wide range of fiction, popular books, children's books, historical texts and academic books, in total almost 3.9 million items.

National Academies Press (National Academy of Sciences)

4000 full-text books in all science disciplines (behavioural science, biology, computer science, education, environment, mathematics, and more). To access a book, click on the title, which should open a page with a link to download a free PDF copy.

National Library of Canada Electronic Collection

The Electronic Collection of the National Library of Canada (NLC) includes over 6000 Canadian book and periodical titles published online by commercial and government publishers. The publications exist in various formats, including HTML, PDF, ASCII and others and in some cases software such as Acrobat Reader is required to read the texts. Some titles are labeled "Restricted Access" and are accessible on-site at the NLC only.

Online Books Page (University of Pennsylvania Libraries)

Search or browse over 30,000 online books as well as access to relevant news, special exhibitions and links to other e-book collections.

Medieval and Classical Library

Access a collection of some of the most important literary works of the Classical and Medieval periods. 

Oxford Text Archive

Founded in 1976 and dedicated to encouraging the acceptance of electronic texts within academia, the Archive contains an extensive collection of high quality e-texts and reference works in a variety of languages.

Project Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg began in 1971. The project operates on a system of volunteers selecting a text that is no longer in copyright (in the USA the general rule is pre-1923), turning the text into e-text, and adding it to the archive.

UC Press E-Books Collection (California Digital Library)

518 titles are available to the public. Before searching, click the "public access books" radio button.

University of Pittsburgh Press Digital Editions

Pitt Press has selected 762 monographs for open access, including titles from the Pitt Latin American Series, Pitt Series in Russian and East European Studies, and Composition, Literacy and Culture. The majority of these titles are out-of-print, but are now available online.