E-book collections

Most of these e-book collections allow you to keyword search across all the titles within the collection.

Individual e-book titles are best accessed via the Library catalogue; to limit your search, select Advanced search, limit to 'e-book' under Collection and then enter your search terms.

Library subscribed services

• Academic Library: over 500 titles including politics, culture and media. Plus the Electric Book Literature Collection, which includes classics from Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, George Eliot, and many more.
• ACLS Humanities E book project: over 1500 titles with 200+ added each year.
• APA E-books Collection: psychology textbooks published by the American Psychological Association in 2011 and 2012
• Cambridge Books Online: access to a custom collection of law books.
  To search available titles click Advanced Search and tick 'Limited to Your Access'; to browse available titles click Access to (top right of the screen)
• Cambridge Companions Online: includes access to:
  • Cambridge Companions Complete Collection: accessible introductions to major writers, artists, philosophers, topics and periods
  • Cambridge Companions to Literature and Classics
  • Cambridge Companions to Music
  • Cambridge Companions to Philosophy, Religion and Culture
• Cambridge Histories Online: over 300 cross-searchable authoritative volumes on a wide range of historical subject areas
• Dawsonera: full access to over 700 titles on this service.
• EBL (Ebook Library): a steadily growing collection of e-books from all subject areas. EBL is also available via Shibboleth
• ECCO - Eighteenth Century Collections Online: nearly 150,000 titles and editions published in English between 1701 and 1800
  • Alternative interface to ECCO via Jisc Historic Books: allows you to cross-search Early English Books Online (EEBO), ECCO, and 19th Century Books from the British Library
• EEBO - Early English Books Online: almost all works in English printed from 1473-1700.
  • Alternative interface to EEBO via Jisc Historic Books: allows you to cross-search EEBO, Eighteenth-Century Collections Online (ECCO), and 19th Century Books from the British Library
• HeinOnline: large legal research collection containing more than nine centuries of legal history
• JISC Historic Books: enables you to cross-search over 300,000 historical books from:
  • Early English Books Online (EEBO)
  • Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO)
  • 19th Century books from the British Library collection
• Lecture Notes in Computer Science: book series from Springer. 1973-present, over 7000 volumes
• Literature Online: 350,000 literary texts together with journals, author biographies and other critical and reference resources
• MyiLibrary: we have over 170 subscription titles on this e-book service. It also has links to other related free services
• Oxford Handbooks Online: Archaeology: thorough introduction to archaeology topics, delivered via specially commissioned essays with extensive referencing to further reading
• Oxford Handbooks Online: Political Science: a thorough introduction to political science topics, delivered via specially commissioned essays with extensive referencing to further reading
• Oxford Reference Online: large collection of subject dictionaries and guides
• Oxford Scholarship Online: over 1400 current books (the economics and finance, law, philosophy, political science, and religion modules) from OUP
• Translated Texts for Historians (from Liverpool University Press): expert scholarly translations of historical sources from 300–800 AD, including letters, annals, political speeches, handbooks, poems, documentary sources, Lives of saints, and many more

Freely available resources

• Electronic Literature Directory: directory of electronic works (including current texts) covering poetry, fiction, drama, and nonfiction. Lists titles, authors, and publishing organisations, with links pointing you to the full-text (wherever it may be!)
• Free books: another directory of the different free e-book services available.
• Globusz Publishing: free electronic books in areas of non-fiction (business, computing, economics, philosophy, etc.), and fiction (classics, poetry, drama, and new releases). Can download and read books online for free, but they expire after a certain period: lifetime membership rates are available
• Internet Archive - Text archive: contains over 1.3 million items, mainly out of copyright books. The IA also contains information in other formats: Moving images, Audio material, Software, and Educational resources.
• Internet Public Library: directory of online text collections, projects and services covering all subject areas hosted at the University of Michigan
• New Bartleby Library (aka Project Bartleby Archive): freely available electronic reference works (classic cookery books, Gray's Anatomy, Roget's Thesaurus, etc.), verse works, fiction, and non-fiction, e-books or anthologies. Includes the complete 70 volumes of the Harvard Classics series, the Oxford Shakespeare, and many others
• Online Book Initiative: web link to FTP service
• Online Books Page: directory of online texts on the internet, compiled, hosted and managed by the University of Pennsylvania Library. Try the search screen, or browse the listings.
• Online Literature Library: out-of-copyright classics in literature.
• Oxford Text Archive: electronic plain-text versions of (mainly out-of copyright) texts in literature, languages, and linguistics (including manuscripts). Currently 2,500 plus texts deposited, ranging from Asterius the Sophist, to Peter Ustinov, taking in Bach, Housman, Marx, and Pope on the way. You need to submit your email address, and texts will be emailed to you as a WinZip file.
• Project Gutenberg: homepage of a free, e-book producing project (not related to the British Library's digitisation of the Gutenberg Bible). Project Gutenberg produces no-frills, sparsely formatted, (mainly ascii) text only electronic versions of out-of-copyright books (classic novels, plays and literature).
• Turning the pages: digitised manuscripts from the British Library
• UC Press E-Books Collection, 1982-2004: selection of digitised books on various subjects and from various publishers, collated by the University of California (part of the California Digital Library project). See the "Public" collection for texts that can be freely downloaded (over 500 titles).