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Project Gutenberg: PG & PGA
I've mentioned Project Gutenberg's free books before, but here are the details.Project Gutenberg provides an online book catalogue and repository of downloadable public domain literature from poetry and the classics to technolgy, health and science. It was started in 1971 when founder Michael Hart, a student at the University of Illinois, was given access to one of the 15 material research lab’s mainframe computers that would become the future Internet. Four randomly selected computer operators were given accounts with a virtually unlimited amount of computer time and the encouragement to play around with it to gain as much job proficiency as possible.
Hart decided to start storing, retrieving and searching library collections. He promptly started typing the “Declaration of Independence” into the computer – the first electronic text – and later tried to send it to everyone on the network – the first version of spam.
The Declaration of Independence was followed by the American Bill of Rights, the US Constitution, the Bible, Shakespeare (a play at a time), and then by general work in the areas of literature and reference. From December 1971 to December 1993 one hundred ebooks were manually typed up and released. Scanners and OCR software have accelerated the pace since then, and Hart’s initial goal to make the 10,000 most consulted books available to the general public in electronic format by the end of the 20th century was achieved in late 2003. Today, Project Gutenberg’s online book catalog spans nearly 30,000 free e-books.
Books are being added at the rate of roughly one per hour at this time. You can subscribe to an RSS feed listing the books as they are uploaded.
Project Gutenberg Australia has fewer books -- around 2,000 -- but most of them are not available through the main PG site, as the copyright laws in OZ are not the same as in America. PGA is searchable or you may view or download a list of their books
Google Books
You can search for books with dedicated Google Book Search. Clicking a result opens an interface where you can view pages from the book as well as content-related advertisements and links to the publisher's website and booksellers. If the book is a public-domain work or out of copyright, the material can be downloaded in PDF format.
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Here is an example: If you are curious about the technical details of designing and laying out gears and gear trains, you can download a complete, free, public domain copy of the 1922 edition of the American Machinist Gear Book from Google Books right now.
Here is the link for the PDF file.
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