Links to Free e-Books Online
Newton Gresham Library provides access to thousands of electronic books (e-books) on many topics. Many other e-books are available for anyone to access for free on the Internet, thanks to a variety of universities and libraries around the world. See what's available to be read here and now on your computer.
e-Books @ NGL
e-Books @ Other Websites
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English and Multilingual
French
German
Spanish
Various Other Languages
e-Books @ NGL
E-books provided by the Newton Gresham Library can be read online, both on-campus and off-campus, by all SHSU students, faculty, and staff (off-campus users will be prompted to provide their SamWeb usernames and passwords). Just like books on paper, e-books can be found by searching the SamCAT library catalog.
To find only e-books when searching in SamCAT, choose Electronic Resource in the box labeled "type." You can also do keyword searches for collections and vendors like Gutenberg-e, NetLibrary, and eBrary, to see what e-books we own from those vendors. Certain collections, like NetLibrary, can also be searched in separate databases.
Here are descriptions of some of the e-book collections available from the NGL website:
- NetLibrary is the largest provider of e-books to NGL. This collection of 45,000+ online books is available to the SHSU community through library purchases and the efforts of Texshare. All titles are represented in the library's SamCAT online catalog, and NetLibrary may also be searched as a database, with “Advanced Search” options for full-text and keyword searching across the entire SHSU collection of books.
- Safari Tech Books Online is an electronic reference library for programming and IT professionals. The searchable full-text contents of 4,700 books selected for SHSU are available online.
- Gutenberg-e is a set of award-winning history books from Columbia University and the American Historical Association. These titles can be searched and opened from the SamCAT online catalog.
- Reference books, including general and specialized dictionaries, encyclopedias, atlases, and handbooks, are available from CredoReference, GVRL (Gale Virtual Reference Library), and Oxford Reference.
- Early American Imprints includes books published in America from 1639-1800 and from 1801-1819.
- Literary Reference Center contains hundreds of classic works (primarily Western culture traditional works, including Jane Austen, Robert Louis Stevenson, William Shakespeare, and Herman Melville), as well as literary reference works.
- MAS Ultra contains 360 reference books selected for a high school audience.
- Texas Reference Center includes the full text of various reference books about Texas.
- Twayne's Authors Series content of nearly 600 books on United States, English, and World authors.
- Twentieth Century American and English Poetry together represent more than 1300 poetry volumes.
e-Books @ Other Websites
Please be aware: The Newton Gresham Library is not responsible for the content on any of the sites listed below, and does not endorse any additional sites which these sites may link to. Some of the websites listed below may include advertisements.
Online Books Search Engine
| Search for title and author keywords: (in sites marked with * below) |
English and Multilingual
- * Alex Catalogue of Electronic Texts - searchable database of ~14,000 public domain works (literature, philosophy, etc.) (Infomotions/Eric Lease Morgan)
- African American Women Writers of the 19th Century - digitized works (New York Public Library Digital Schomburg)
- American Verse Project - American poetry volumes published before 1920 (U. Michigan)
- * Bartleby.com - great books online, including fiction and reference
- * Beowulf in Cyberspace - Old English facsimiles facing modern text translation (Benjamin Slade)
- * Bibles, Multilingual - (ARTFL Project, U. Chicago) (only title keywords in search, example: "King James")
- * British Women Romantic Poets, 1789-1832 - electronic texts (U. California, Davis)
- * Classic Bookshelf - "classic" works (by authors like Dickens, Twain, etc.); customize your reading interface (colors, font, size, etc.) (only authors in search)
- * Classic Reader - books, plays, and short stories from Shakespeare, Dickens, Austen, and more
- * Collected Works of Shakespeare (U. Sydney, Australia)
- * Digital Dante - several English translations, with original Italian (Columbia U.)
- * Digital Scriptorium - multilingual medieval and renaissance manuscripts (Columbia U. Libraries)
- Electronic Books - index of sites, grouped by broad topics (U. Texas)
- * Folklore and Mythology Online - full-text folklore and mythology (multicultural; translated) (D. L. Ashliman, U. Pittsburgh)
- * Full Books Online - organized by title
- Google Books - to search only complete electronic books, do an Advanced Search and choose "Full view only"
- * Internet Classics Archive - mostly Greco-Roman classics, some Persian and Chinese authors (MIT)
- * Internet Medieval Sourcebook - books, papers, etc. from medieval history and about medieval study (Fordham U., Center for Medieval Studies)
- * James Fenimore Cooper - texts online (James Fenimore Cooper Society, hosted by SUNY)
- The Making of America - books and articles from American history, antebellum period through Reconstruction (U. Michigan)
- The Online Book Page - index of sites with free online books; lists available by specialty (Foreign Languages, Agriculture, etc.) (U. Pennsylvania)
- * Page by Page Books - classic books, stories, speeches, etc. available online
- * Project Gutenberg
- * Turning The Pages - great books online (British Library)
- * Victorian Women Writers Project (Indiana U.)
- * William Blake Archive (Library of Congress & UNC Chapel Hill)
- * Women Romantic-Era Writers (Birkbeck, U. London)
- * World of Dante - with searchable Italian text, English translation, maps, and more (U. Virginia)
French
- * ARTFL Project - historical French dictionaries, encyclopedias, and reference works (U. Chicago)
- * ABU: la Bibliotheque Universelle - public domain French texts (ABU)
- * Charrette Project - Chrétien de Troyes's Le Chevalier de la Charrette (Princeton U.)
- * French E-Texts - some publicly accessible, some UVA users only (U. Virginia Library)
- * French Literature (Classici Stranieri)
- French Resources Online - language-learning resources (iLoveLanguages)
- * Gallica - Digital Library of the Bibliotheque Nationale de France (Gallica 2, Beta)
- * Lire les Femmes Ecrivains et les Litteratures Africaines - women writers of French-speaking Africa (U. Western Australia)
- * Litterature francophone virtuelle (ClicNet)
- Livre des sources medievales - medieval sources in French (Fordham U., Center for Medieval Studies)
- * Textes Francaise (ATHENA)
German
- * Austrian Literature Online - mostly in German
- * Bibliotheca Germanica - some online works in German (Bibliotheca Augustana)
- Deutsche National Bibliothek (German National Library)
- * Freiburger Anthologie
- * German Literature (Classici Stranieri)
- German Resources Online - language-learning resources (iLoveLanguages)
- * German texts (Zeno.org)
- * Göttinger Digitalisierungs-Zentrum
- * MATEO - MAnnheimer TExte Online (U. Mannheim)
- * Ngiyaw eBooks - focus on Austrian women's history and literature
- * Projekt Gutenberg-DE - German texts (no direct relation to Project Gutenberg, United States)
- * Sophie - German works by women, along with some English translations
- * WikiSource: Zeitschriften - links to pre-1930 German magazines (no newspapers) online
Spanish
- * Biblioteca Babab - downloadable PDFs of works from Spanish and Latin American authors, published by Babab.com
- Biblioteca Natcional de Espana, Biblioteca Digital Hispanica - various collections of digitized materials (Spanish National Library)
- * Biblioteca Natcional de Espana, Hemeroteca Digital - Digital newspapers (Spanish National Library)
- * Biblioteca Virtual Miguel De Cervantes - includes an extensive collection of Spanish literature, language, and history works, as well as a Spanish sign language library
- * Centro Virtual Cervantes: Literatura
- * Cervantes Project (Texas A&M U.)
- Digital Libraries of Rare Books in Spain - index of sites
- * Elaleph
- El Quijote en la BNE - various editions of Cervantes Quijote, digitized, in a great interactive reader
- * Garcia Lorca: Obras Completas - many complete poems, essays, and plays by Garcia Lorca
- * Golden Age Spanish Sonnets - in Spanish with English translations (Sweet Briar College)
- * Ibero-American Electronic Text Series - works in the humanities (U. Wisconsin-Madison)
- * Libro de fuente medieval - medieval sources in Spanish (Fordham U., Center for Medieval Studies)
- * Los Textos: Comedias, entremeses, autos y másn - theater of the Spanish Golden Age (Association for Hispanic Classical Theater)
- Memoria Chilena - Chilean historical books and other Spanish materials
- * Proyecto Filosofia en Espanol - philosophical works in Spanish
- Spanish Resources Online - language-learning resources (iLoveLanguages)
- * TEXTOS LEMIR - medieval Spanish texts
- * Works of Miguel de Cervantes (Fred F. Jehle, Indiana U.-Purdue U. Fort Wayne)
Various Other Languages Could Be Found At...
- Electronic Books - index of sites, grouped by broad topics (U. Texas)
- Electronic Text Collections in Western European Literature - index of sites (WESSweb, U. Virginia)
- Foreign Languages and Literatures Resources on the Web - index of sites (Iowa State U. library)
- Major Text Collections Online: By Language - index of sites (Columbia U.)
- Resources - language-learning resources (iLoveLanguages)