Playing the Piano
Free E-books: Where to get them and How to read them
by Michael Mak - Thursday, 4 November 2010, 12:46 AM
 

Free E-books: Where to get them and How to read them

By Michael Mak, ELDER Project (www.elderproject.knet.ca)

With the evolution of portable e-book readers such as the Amazon Kindle or the IPad, or even the XO laptop, one might ask – are free books available on the internet? And what do we use to read them on a computer?

As I was compiling the OLPC Little Green Machines site (please check it out at: http://meeting.knet.ca/mp19/course/view.php?id=81 ) I came across a guide to use the XO as a eBook reader, so I decided to create a guide to share the info on how you can get free books and read them on a generic PC or a Mac.

1) Where to get Free E-Books?

For me, there are 2 main places to get books: Project Gutenberg and The Internet Archive

Project Gutenberg:

Project Gutenberg is the oldest source of free e-books and still one of the best. There are three main sites with different titles to choose from, including audio book format:

Project Gutenberg at http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page

Project Gutenberg Australia at http://gutenberg.net.au/

Project Gutenberg Canada at http://www.gutenberg.ca/

The Internet Archive

The Internet Archive is a site devoted to preserving the public domain. In addition to books they have movies, music, and even some software that is in the public domain. There are over a million and a half e-books available from this site. The URL for e-books is:

http://www.archive.org/details/texts

Internet Archive books are created by scanning page images, including the covers of the books. When you read one of them the visual experience is very much like reading the original book. The website lets you read the book online in "flipbook" format, which is very much like paging through the original book:

There is a Children's Book Collection at the Internet Archive at this URL:

http://www.archive.org/details/iacl

Quite a few of the books are from the 1800's and more of interest to children's book collectors than actual children, but you can find the Oz books, books by Edgar Rice Burroughs ( Tarzan ), Jules Verne, Andrew Lang's Fairy Books , The Wind In The Willows , etc. all with illustrations.

2) How do you read them?

From both Project Gutenberg and Internet Archive, there are options to save it to a format called EPUB.  (You can also save it to PDF, which is equally readable and accessible). For example, downloading Pride and Prejudice from Project Gutenberg will look like this:

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1342

Click EPUB (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1342.epub )

And save it to your desired directory, for example a flash disk for portability.

Now, it’s time to get the reader. Go to http://www.adobe.com/products/digitaleditions/#fp to download adobe software called adobe digital editions. For Windows users, you can download the EXE installation file here: http://www.softpedia.com/progDownload/Adobe-Digital-Editions-Download-76668.html

After the download is complete, you can use the reader to open EPUB (and PDF as well) to read your downloaded books. It has an extremely clean interface, where you can switch from library view to single book view. Please note to “open” the EPUB file, press ctrl + o to find the EPUB/PDF file that you are looking.

Library View 1

 

Library View 2

 

Happy Reading!!! I will put up a separate post for Linux Users (Ubuntu, not Mac OSX) soon.

Michael Mak