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NLS Factsheet: Selected Sources for Electronic Texts

Electronic Texts

www.usg.edu/galileo/internet/electronic/electext.html

Has links to general collections; classics and history; constitutions, laws, and
treaties; economics; literature, drama, and poetry; mythology and folklore;
philosophy; and religion.

Electronic Texts and Documents, University of Washington

www. lib.washington.edu/subject/humanities/dr/eltxt.html

Has links to a variety of topics, such as country studies, the Irish famine, Mark
Twain, the Vatican files, and World War I.

Humanities Text Initiative, University of Michigan

www.hti.umich.edu/

Includes the American Verse Project, different versions of the Bible, and The
Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (hosted for the Abraham Lincoln Association).

LETRS: Library Electronic Text Resource Service

www.letrs.indiana.edu/

Provides humanities-related electronic texts via the Internet and in the LETRS
Humanities Computing Lab, Indiana University.

Library of Congress Full-Text Resources

www.loc.gov/rr/tools.html# fulltext

Includes American Memory: Historical Collections that consists of primary source
materials relating to American culture and history; Country Studies with the full te
of handbooks on ninety-one countries; and Meeting of Frontiers, presented in both
English and Russian, that tells the story of the exploration and settlement of the
American West and of the Russian Far East and Siberia.

Refdesk.com

www.refdesk.com/

Includes links to electronic texts, virtual encyclopedias, virtual newspapers, and fas
facts such as almanacs, quotations, and thesauri.

| Selected Bibliography

Dresner, Anna.

Finding e-books on the Internet.

Boston, MA: National Braille Press, 2002. $14.

Available in large print and braille. (88 St. Stephen Street, 02115).

Facts: Web-Braille.

Washington: Library of Congress, National Library Service for the Blind and
Physically Handicapped, 2003. 2p. Free.
<www.loc.gov/nls/reference/factsheets/webbraille.html>.

Compiled by
Carol Strauss
Reference Section

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NLS Factsheet: Selected Sources for Electronic Texts

Questia

(713) 358-2600

www.questia.com/

Has a collection of books and journal articles in the humanities and social sciences
selected by professional collection development librarians. Uses dynamic HTML and
Javascript. Offers monthly ($24.95), quarterly ($49.95), and annual ($129.95)
subscription plans.

Tiflolibros: E-Books for the Blind

www.tiflolibros.com.ar

Has more than five thousand digital books in Spanish that registered members can
download using their personal password. Includes a small but growing number of
books in English, German, French, Italian, and Portuguese.

Web-Braille

800-424-8567

nls@loc.gov

www.loc.gov/nls/braille

Provides braille magazines produced by the National Library Service for the Blind
and Physically Handicapped (NLS), press-braille books produced by NLS since 1992
and braille music scores. Access is password-protected and limited to NLS patrons
(residents of the United States or American citizens living abroad who have a visua
or other print disability) and eligible institutions. Files, which are in contracted brail
ASCII format, may be read online or downloaded for viewing offline or embossing.

Selected List of Additional Resources

Digital Librarian: A Librarian's Choice of the Best of the Web
www.digital-librarian.com/electronic.html
Maintained by Margaret Vail Anderson, a librarian in Cortland, New York.

Directory of Electronic Text Centers, Rutgers University
harvest.rutgers.edu/ceth/etext_directory/
Has links to electronic text centers in the United States, Canada, and Australia.

E-Digital Books, LLC

www.edigitalbooks.com/

Provides a clearinghouse for writers to place their electronic literature online.
Readers can download a book to a computer hard drive or obtain on CD-ROM; price
varies by size of the file.

Electronic Text Collections

history.hanover.edu/etexts.html

Has links to historical and literary sources from different time periods in Africa, Asié
Europe, the Middle East, and the United States.

Electronic Text Collections in Western European Literature
www.lib.virginia.edu/wess/etexts.html

Lists Internet sources for literary texts in western European languages other than
English.

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Judy Dixon
Consumer Relations Officer

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NLS Factsheet: Selected Sources for Electronic Texts

NLS Factsheets

Selected Sources for Electronic Texts

Issued 2003

This factsheet presents a selected list of sources for electronic texts. The online file
are in a variety of formats ranging from plain text to digital audio and digital braille
Most can be downloaded and read offline. Electronic braille materials can also be

embossed. Sites vary with regards to accessibility and questions should be directec
to the sites' webmasters. The web site address is given for each entry and telephor
numbers and e-mail addresses are provided, when known, for further information.

Accessible Book Collection

(703) 631-1585

customerservice@accessiblebookcollection.org
www.accessiblebookcollection.org/default.htm

Provides high-interest low-reading level digital text in HTML to individuals with a
documented disability that prevents reading standard print. Also serves governmer
and nonprofit schools and rehabilitation centers. Has $49.95 annual subscription fe

Alex Catalogue of Electronic Texts

(574) 246-0639

eric_morgan@infomotions.com

www.infomotions.com/alex/

Has a collection of free public domain documents from American literature, English
literature, and Western philosophy. Books are in PDF and text formats.

Audible.com

888-283-5051 or 888-429-5575

www.audible.com/adbl/store/welcome.jsp

Includes forty-five hundred audiobooks and fourteen thousand other audio progran
in a broad range of subjects that can be downloaded to a computer. Readers can
listen immediately, transfer files to an audio player, or burn them onto a CD. Items
are spoken-word audio in a proprietary audible.com format. Cost: $14.95-$19.95
per month.

Bartleby.com

webmaster@bartleby-inc.com

www.bartleby.com

Publishes the classics of literature, nonfiction, and reference books free of charge.
Includes books of quotations, the 1914 Oxford edition of the Complete Works of
William Shakespeare, the Columbia Gazetteer, Gray's Anatomy, and Strunk's
Elements of Style. Books are offered in various proprietary e-book formats.

Bibliomania.com Ltd
books@bibliomania.com
www. bibliomania.com/

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NLS Factsheet: Selected Sources for Electronic Texts

Offers free online literature of classic fiction, drama, poetry, and short stories and
contemporary articles and interviews. Most books are in HTML format.

Bookshare.org

(650) 475-5440

info@bookshare.org

www.bookshare.org/web/Welcome.html

Provides digital books in a broad range of subjects to United States residents who
have a visual or other print disability. Requires completion of an online form, proof
of disability, and payment of $25 sign-up fee and $50 annual subscription. Books
are in text format and contracted braille. Most text files are presented with XML
markup and the site includes tools for reading these files.

Braille Book Files

jimallan@tsbvi.edu

www.tsbvi.edu/braille/braillebooks.htm

Has books at all grade levels that are submitted by teachers and transcribers; the
site is maintained by the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired. Access i
password-protected and limited to individuals who have a visual or other print
disability and to members of a nonprofit organization or governmental agency that
provides specialized services to such individuals. Books are in MegaDots, Duxbury,
and ASCII format.

ClassicReader.com

www.classicreader.com/

Contains free literature for which copyright protection has expired. Presents these
works in eight categories: fiction, nonfiction, drama, children, poetry, Shakespeare
short stories, and classical. All books are in HTML; includes a plain-text format that
eliminates most graphics.

Electronic Text Center

(434) 924-3230

etextcenter@virginia.edu

etext. lib.virginia.edu/

Combines a free online archive of tens of thousands of SGML- and XML-encoded
electronic texts and images in the humanities with a service at the University of
Virginia Library that offers hardware and software suitable for the creation and
analysis of text. Most material is in SGML or XML; site includes tools for reading
these file types.

Fictionwise

(973) 701-6771

www.fictionwise.com/

Publishes (i.e., owns the electronic rights to certain eBooks) and distributes (sells
eBooks from other ePublishers) fiction and nonfiction in various eBook formats.
Costs range from 49 cents for short stories to $4.99 and up for lengthy works.
Books are in a variety of proprietary e-book formats.

4Literature
jaret.wilson@javatar.net
www.4literature.net/

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NLS Factsheet: Selected Sources for Electronic Texts

Has more than two thousand books, stories, poems, plays, and religious and
historical documents in HTML format. Readers can read online at no charge or can
purchase the entire collection on CD-ROM for $19.99.

International Electronic Braille Book Library

(410) 659-9314

mgosse@prodigy.net

www. braille.org/braille_books/

Contains over one thousand titles of electronic braille books, including classics and
publications of the National Federation of the Blind. Files, which are in contracted
braille ASCII format, may be read online or downloaded for viewing offline or
embossing.

Internet Public Library (IPL) Books Collection

(734) 764-4386

readroom@ipl.org

ipl.si.umich.edu/div/books/

Includes over twenty thousand online books, stories, essays, poems, articles,
dramas, letters, and speeches that are freely available online. Material is in text an
HTML format.

netLibrary, a division of Online Computer Library Center (OCLC)

800-413-4557

sales@netlibrary.com

www.netlibrary.com/

Offers more than thirty-seven thousand eBook titles in subjects such as arts,
business, history, literature, religion, science, and technology to academic, public,
and corporate libraries that purchase a collection of titles. Patrons must create an
account with an affiliated library in order to access the collection. Books are ina
proprietary e-book format.

The Online Books Page

(215) 573-0758 or (215) 898-7091

onlinebooks@pobox.upenn.edu

onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/

Includes more than nineteen thousand English works that are available online at nc
charge. Has a listing of foreign language and literature resources and an archive of
serials. Books are in HTML.

Page by Page Books

www.pagebypagebooks.com/

Has hundreds of free classic books that are in the public domain, including United
States historical documents and presidential inaugural addresses. Books can be rez
online one page at a time.

Project Gutenberg

www.promo.net/pg/ or <www.gutenberg.net/

Has three types of free texts: light literature such as Peter Pan, serious literature
such as the Bible and works of Shakespeare, and reference works such as Roget's
Thesaurus and almanacs. Most books are in text or HTML format; a few require
proprietary e-book reading software.

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