eBooks: Free eBook Collections

Ebooks available  on the web may have access restrictions or quality issues.

Access

Due to copyright restrictions, many ebooks are not available as complete texts. If a work is still in copyright, the author/publisher controls whether the ebook can be made available online for free. 

Many ebooks found in Google Scholar are still under copyright. Access may be limited to the title page or table of contents. Some publishers allow portions of a book to be viewed, and a few allow entire books to be viewed. 

Image Quality

Many of the books available on the web have been constructed from scanned images. The quality of the images varies widely. Poor quality can result from low-resolution scans, or because of damage to the pages.

Accuracy of Text

Some book-digitizing projects, like Project Gutenburg, have employed volunteers to create text files by retyping books manually. Books have also been converted to text from scanned images, using OCR software. Both methods can introduce significant errors into a text. Many projects lack the funding to exercise a rigorous editing process to discover and eliminate this type of error.