Electronic Books

This page offers access to collections of full-text e-books which have been subscribed to by Information Services, as well as access to collections of freely available digital books accessible free of charge via the Internet.

• How to find e-books
• Subscribed e-book collections
• Freely availably e-books - general collections
  • See especially Project Gutenberg
• Freely available e-books - specialist and/or topic specific collections
• Other e-book resources on the web

How to find e-books that AU subscribes to:

The links below, in the Subscribed e-book collections, go directly to each provider website and these can be searched (usually through the full text or table of contents) using their native interface, but note that you will only see the full text of those that we do have a subscription to, although the results of your search may include titles that we do not subscribe to.

However, if you know the title of the book (e.g. from a reading list) and wish to know if we have full-text electronic access to it, or wish to know what e-books we have in a broad subject area e.g. physics, then you may search Voyager – the library catalogue by individual title (if known) or by browsing the list of available e-books by either of the following methods:

• Doing a Classmark Search in Voyager for Electronic Books (this will provide a list of all e-books). OR
• Using the Apply Limits option to set Location to Electronic Books and then entering your search (this will limit a search on a chosen subject or by author / keyword to just e-books). OR
• Doing a Keyword search, typing e-book and an author, or keyword of your choice (i.e. e-book psychology to find e-books on psychology).

Subscribed e-book collections

• Academic Library
• Dawsonera e-books
• Gale Virtual Reference Library
• Greenwood Digital Collection
• netLibrary
  netLibrary is a commercial e-books site which specialises in scholarly, reference, and professional titles. AU has subscribed to an initial selection of over 100 e-books via netLibrary. These are mainly digital copies of selected core texts and short loan books in all subjects. To access these titles, either search through Voyager - the library catalogue or go to the netLibrary website directly to search through individual titles or the entire collection (please note that a search via netLibrary will find books both in the subscribed collection and in the netLibrary's freely available e-book collection).
• EEBO (Early English Books Online)
  From the first book printed in English by William Caxton, through the age of Spenser and Shakespeare and the tumult of the English Civil War, EEBO contains over 125,000 volumes of early works printed in English and over 22.5 million original page images of a large collection of essential books, plays, poetry and reference titles, with citations and indexed illustrations, listed in
  • Pollard & Redgrave's Short-Title Catalogue (1475-1640)
  • Wing's Short-Title Catalogue (1641-1700)
  • Thomason Tracts (1640-1661).
  • English Books Tract Supplement (perspective on many aspects of 16th and 17th-century British life).
  Full text available for some titles. AU has a full subscription to this source, however unsubscribed users can search the Featured Content (200 works) and download a chosen sample of PDFs for offline viewing.
• KnowUK (via Proquest)

General Collections

• Project Gutenberg Contains nearly 30,000 Free e-books (as at 13th August 2009) and is the longest-running e-book website (38 years) 'The Project Gutenberg Philosophy is to make information, books and other materials available to the general public in forms a vast majority of the computers, programs and people can easily read, use, quote, and search'. There are three types of text on the site - light literature, heavy literature and reference texts. Use the search option to explore what is available.
• Alex Catalogue of Electronic Texts
  This collection covers American and English Literature and Western Philosophy and is compiled by Eric Lease Morgan. Use the search engine or browse lists on the left to locate texts - use the 'local copy' to instantly view the full text online. There are options to search the content of located texts, utilise on-the-fly creation of PDF (Portable Document Format) files and other features but these are quite technically advanced, require software downloads and are therefore not recommended.
• ATHENA
  This Swiss site lists 10,000+ books in various languages covering various subject areas. Search options are available.
• Berkeley Digital Library SunSite
  This is a fairly small collection of specific resources, it lists a mix of image and text digital archives. It includes the Online Medieval and Classical Library.
• Bibliomania
  Owned by Maytech Publishing Ltd this site lists over 2000 classic texts, including the complete works of Shakespeare. Browse and search options are available from the left hand menu. The texts are spilt into the three categories of read, study and research and are displayed in a page by page format.
• Carrie - A Full-Text Electronic Library
  This site is provided by the European University Institute, Italy and is a full text digital library.
• Classic Bookshelf
  Classic Bookshelf offers free access to great works of classic literature, over sixty authors are included. The software for reading the text allows you to choose the page size, type face, text size, paper and ink colors. There is an option to use a bookmark to keep your page when you wish to leave the site. Use the site map to navigate the site.
• Electronic Text Collections in Western European Literature
  This page is provided by the Western European Studies Section of the Association of College and Research Libraries. It lists Internet sources for literary texts in the western European languages other than English. Within each language category the collections are listed in order of size with an alphabetical listing of individual authors.
• Free Books
  A collection of sites, hosted on Bruce's Australian E-Book Newsletter website, which give access to free e-books available via Digital Libraries in Australia, and around the world, collections of other free Australian Books, Other Free Book Sites/Pages in English, World - Other Languages, Regional and National, Individual Topics/Miscellaneous, Sacred Texts & Religion.
• Glasgow Digital Library (GDL) has produced a series of freely available e-books relating to Glasgow and Scotland.  These books have been digitised and converted to web format at the Centre for Digital Library Research from a variety of special collections.Research is continuing into e-book development and indexing, and is partly funded by the University of Strathclyde Research and Development Fund.
• Internet Public Library Online Texts Collection
  This is a joint project of the Internet Public Library and the University of Michigan Humanities Text Initiative. The collection contains records of over 14,000 titles that can be browsed by author, by title, or by Dewey Decimal Classification. A search option also available.
• Online Library of Literature
  A small collection of c 100 literature classics available free of charge. The site is simply laid out, use the authors index to browse what is available.
• On-Line Books Page
  The On-Line Books Page is a gateway that facilitates access to books that are freely readable over the Internet. Various search and browse options are available. Hosted by the University of Pennsylvania Library
• ManyBooks.net
• Oxford Text Archive (OTA)
• See also: Google Book Search.

Specialist/Topic SpecificCollections

• African American Women Writers of the Nineteenth Century
  This site is provided by the Schomberg Center and makes available 42 published works in full text online. The collection provides access to the thought, perspectives and creative abilities of black women as captured in books and pamphlets published prior to 1920. The site uses frames to navigate the full text.
• Books from the Past
  Culturenet Cymru is working in partnership with the Welsh Books Council to bring to the world 'Books from Past', these important books are out of print and difficult to locate. Books from the Past is a collection of electronic books of Welsh interest freely available online. It will be like a library reading room offering access to books 24 hrs a day, 7 days a week. There will be no access restrictions, readers will be able to 'borrow' these books for as long as they like with no fines, no library cards and no queues.
• British Women Romantic Poets Project
  The goal of this project, undertaken by the Shields Library, University of California, is the design and development of highly accurate and reliable electronic editions of works published by British women poets between 1789 and 1832. More than 45 titles are included, choose the HTML format for the best solution to viewing the text.
• Celebration of Women Writers
  The Celebration of Women Writers project recognizes the contributions of women writers throughout history. The collection provides a comprehensive listing of links to biographical and bibliographical information about women writers, and complete published books written by women. Browse by author and browse by category options are available.
• Christian Classics Ethereal Library
  The CCEL is a library intended to serve the whole church and you will find works from a variety of viewpoints and traditions are included. Over 200 texts are available to be viewed page by page.
• Dostoevsky Research Station
  This site offers online text for 9 of the novels of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (1821-1881), plus a reference site for the study of his works.
• Early Americas Digital Archive
• Library of Economics and Liberty
  This web site, produced by Liberty Fund Inc, is dedicated to advancing the study of economics, market economies and liberty. There are more than twenty authors included offering a variety of books and essays. Various search and browse options are available.
• Library of Southern Literature
  This site follows on from a bibliography compiled by the late Professor Robert Bain of the Department of English at University of North Carolina, in consultation with colleagues in Southern studies from around the United States. The goal of this project is to create digitized editions of each of these texts, drawing on the premier Southern collections of the libraries at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The only option is to browse by author.
• Luminarium
  This site is the personal page of Anniina Jokinen and covers medieval, renaissance and early 17th C online works. About 40 authors are included and the site has lavish colour illustrations and music. Search and browse options are available.
• Making of America
  Cornell University Library have mounted this digital library of primary sources in American social history. The site contains images of over 100 books and more than twenty journals. Only 6 items included are electronic text rather than page images. Browse and search options are available.
• Online Medieval and Classical Library
  This collection from the Berkeley Digital Library Sunsite comprises of some of the most important literary works of Classical and Medieval civilization. Search and browse options are available.
• Oxford Text Archive
  Access to an extensive collection of high-quality electronic texts, reference works, and linguistic corpora: Users of The Oxford Text Archive have access to a large number of digital resources. Many of these resources are freely available and can be used by any member of the research and teaching community, although some restrictions to apply to certain texts.
• Perseus Project
  Digital library for the study of the ancient world and beyond. Includes English translations of the works of Greek and Latin authors to the complete works of Christopher Marlowe. Various detailed search options.
• Poetry Archive
• Victorian Women Writers Project
  Coverage is UK women writers of the 19th C and includes anthologies, novels, political pamphlets, religious tracts, children's books, poetry, verse and drama. Documents from over 50 authors are available and accuracy and completeness of texts are stressed.
• William Blake Archive
  This site shows page images from Blake's original works (accompanied by text transcriptions) and the text and textual notes of David V.Erdman's 1988 revised edition of The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake.
• Works of William Shakespeare
  The complete works arranged in categories - the original source of the text is the Complete Moby ^TM Shakespeare.

Other e-book resources

• Easy Media Broadcast
  Website hosting free e-books in English, French, German, Spanish and Italian. Includes audio books. To read the books you will need to use the TK3 Reader which can be downloaded from the site.
• EBONI (Electronic Books ON-Screen Interface)
  The EBONI project was funded by JISC and based at the Centre for Digital Library Research at the University of Strathclyde. Although the project is now closed, the site is still available and contains a guide to designing electronic books and a bookmark list. EBONI's Catalogue of Online Learning and Teaching Resources has now closed; it's records incorporated into Intute http://www.intute.ac.uk (an educational subject gateway)