Places to get ebooks
Apart from your local library (for example Brisbane City Council free ebooks and audiobooks), here are some useful sites:
- Project Gutenberg -- the same guy that invented the movable type printing press also made this website for distributing books that are out of copyright, I guess.
- Standard EBooks -- beautifully formatted free ebooks.
- Open Library -- part of the Internet Archive. (which is great!)
- Google ebook store - access to the topselling free ebooks
- Anna's Archive -- "the largest truly open library in human history" (because if we include the history of ants, whales or bacterium, theirs are much bigger)
- More datasets listed at Anna's Archive, and mirrors at https://annas-archive.org, https://annas-archive.gs, https://annas-archive.se
- There is a system called Library Genesis or LibGen, currently available at https://libgen.is/ which allows you to find ebooks. It's similar to sci-hub.
- Z-Lib is kind of a fork of Library Genesis/
Free audio books at:
And:
On iOS, for those of us addicted to convenience, the Oldio app provides free Audible-style listening to Librivo
—hn comments
- "Non-resident" library cards - as a way to get access in overdrive to more collections.
- https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/EBook_Lending_Libraries#Widely_Accessible_Libraries_and_Subscription_Services
And another thing is the smithsonian open access:
...where you can download, share, and reuse millions of the Smithsonian's images-right now, without asking. With new platforms and tools, you have easier access to more than 3 million 2D and 3D digital items from our collections-with many more to come. This includes images and data from across the Smithsonian's 19 museums, nine research centers, libraries, archives, and the National Zoo
(I'm not really sure where/how to catalog that? When will I need this? It has awesome old pictures, and machines and diagrams and drawings of animals and places and buildings...)
![smithsonian-example][smithsonian-example.jpg]
Shadow Libraries
Some of the libraries above are Shadow Libraries the existence of which implies the existence of:
Shadow Librarians
I have hidden a novel about shadow librarians in an unexpected book.