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Best of the Web: History & Social Sciences » Disability Information » Books On The Web / Electronic Texts

  • Accessible Book Collection

    A fee-based subscriber service that provides high-interest, low-reading level digital text in html for people with a documented disability that prevents reading standard print.

  • Alex Catalogue of Electronic Texts

    Collection of digital documents, including American literature, English literature, and Western philosophy. Can read online as Local Copy or download as an ebook.

  • Audible

    "Audible is your home for premium digital audio entertainment and information. Choose from more than 25,000 best-selling digital audioboooks, radio shows, audio versions of popular magazines, daily newspapers, and more."

  • Audible.com

    A fee-based service that includes 4,500 audiobooks and 14,000 other audio programs in a broad range of subjects. Available for downloading to a computer, for transfer to a player, or for burning onto a CD.

  • Avalon Project

    Full-text documents in the fields of law, history, economics, politics, diplomacy, and government. The site has a search feature and is organized by century and then alphabetically by the name of the document.

  • Avalon Project at the Yale Law School

    A collection of hypertexted primary documents relevant to law, history, economics, politics, diplomacy, and government.

  • Avalon Project at Yale Law School

    Legal documents dating from pre-18th Century to the present.

  • Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy

    Yale University's Project Avalon makes available in digital format full text documents in the fields of Law, History, Economics, Politics, Diplomacy and Government. This phenomenal resource includes documents as varied as the ancient Code of Hammurabi, the Communist Manifesto, and the Treaty of Versailles.

  • Bibliomania

    Classic fiction, drama, poetry, short stories, and contemporary articles and interviews. Also has study guides, reference books, author biographies, and book summaries.

  • BookShare.org

    A fee-based service for people with visual or other print disabilities. Readers must have access to computers with assistive technology such as refreshable braille displays or synthetic speech in order to use these digital files.

  • Braille Book Files

    A password-protected site that offers books at all grade levels, submitted by teachers and transcribers, for people with visual or other print disabilities. Site is maintained by the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired.

  • Classic Reader

    Free literature in the public domain, including works of fiction, non-fiction, drama, childrens titles, poetry, Shakespeare, and short stories. Includes a plain text format.

  • Digitized Historical Works from the <i>Making of America</i> at the University of Michigan

    The Making of America is a digital library of primary sources in American social history. Items are currently located in two separate databases at the University of Michigan and Cornell University. Search each of these databases for "Staten Island" to find the full text of hundreds of books and articles that mention Staten Island. The University of Michigan database spans the years 1800-1925. Items of interest include: History of the State of New York (1853-71), History of New Netherland (1855), A Record of the Commissioned Officers, Non-Commissioned Officers, privates, of the Regiments Which Were Organized in the State of New York (Civil War) 1864-68 and Contributions to the Early History of Perth Amboy and Adjoining Country (1856).

  • Electronic Text Center - the Modern English Collection

    This heterogenous collection contains fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama, letters, newspapers, manuscripts and illustrations from 1500 to the present, arranged for browsing by author's last name or by category of interest.

  • Electronic Text Center at the University of Virginia Library

    Has approximately 70,000 humanities texts in many languages including related images such as book illustrations, covers, and manuscripts.

  • Fictionwise

    Sells ebooks in various formats.

  • Great Books Foundation

    Comprehensive list of organizations that produce Great Books Foundation titles in formats suitable for the visually impaired. Formats include books produced in large print, Braille, and audio books on tape.

  • International Electronic Braille Book Library

    Over 1,000 electronic braille books, including classics and publications of the National Federation of the Blind. Files are in contracted braille ASCII format and may be red online or downloaded.

  • LibriVox

    LibriVox provides totally free audiobooks from the public domain.

  • Making of America (University of Michigan)

    Making of America (MOA) is a digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through Reconstruction.

  • Merck Manual Home Edition

    Online version of a standard health reference book.

  • Modern English Collection

    This heterogenous collection contains fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama, letters, newspapers, manuscripts and illustrations from 1500 to the present, arranged for browsing by author's last name or by category of interest.

  • On-line Books Page from the University of Pennsylvania.

    Another source for e-texts which include plays, accessible by author, title and subject.

  • Online Books Page

    Serves as an index to more than 18,000 public domain books on the web, searchable by author, title, and subject.

  • Open Library

    The Open Library was created to allow free web access to important book collections from around the world.

  • Page by Page Books

    Hundreds of public domain classics, including US historical documents and presidential inaugural addresses.

  • Project Gutenberg

    Comprehensive collection of electronic texts.

  • Questia

    Fee-based subscriber service offering books and journal articles in the humanities and social sciences.

  • Recorded Books

    Recorded Books is one of the world's largest independent publisher and distributor of unabridged audiobooks on cassettes and CDs, narrated by professional actors. You can purchase or rent.

  • Recorded Books Online

    Provides info on new releases. Has a searchable database, authorinterviews, news items, and a chat room.

  • The Making of America (MoA)

    A rich collection of 19th century books and journals from the University of Michigan. Topics range from American social history from the antebellum period, through reconstruction.

  • The Million Book Project

    An international library partnership with the Internet Archive, offering a free-to-read, searchable digital library of over 10,612 items.

  • The Online Books Page

    Over 1500 books online

  • Tiflolibros: E-Books for the Blind

    More than 5,000 digital books in Spanish for registered subscribers.

  • Wired for Books

    Author interviews, poetry, childrens titles, and more, most of them in RealAudio.

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