Large-scale repositories
These are big collections of texts, big enough to act as small library-like collections in their own right. The threshold for inclusion here may rise over time. Listed alphabetically.
- Google Books (page images of 10,000,000+ fully readable volumes, plus many more copyrighted books available via excerpts and snippets)
- Advanced Book Search (may be easier to find specific free titles via this page)
- HathiTrust Digital Library (3,000,000+ freely readable titles, and additional search-only titles, from Google and elsewhere)
- Internet Archive Ebooks and Texts (20,000,000+ freely readable volumes; page images and some transcriptions)
- Project Gutenberg (over 50,000 items, mostly book transcriptions)
Significant indexes and search aids
The sites below primarily provide search engines, indexes or useful link lists for finding online books.
- ATHENA (multilingual text index in Switzerland)
- Digital Book Index (free and for-pay books online; registration-based)
- The Online Books Page (the site that includes this directory)
- Voice of the Shuttle and its English Literature section
Significant smaller-scale archives
Everything else we see worth listing that doesn’t fit in more specialized categories.
- Oxford Text Archive (in the UK)
- The Bibliomania Library (from Data Text)
- Electronic Open Stacks (preservation digitization at Chicago)
- National Library of Canada Electronic Collection (archives texts from or about Canada)
- IntraText Digital Library (5000+ texts, multilingual, main focus on religion, Latin, Italian, and science)
- Michigan Digital Public Text Collections (100+ collections open to the public)
- Project Gutenberg Canada (Literature in the public domain in Canada)
- Faded Page (4000+ books in the public domain in Canada)
- Roy Glashan’s Library (Literature in the public domain in Australia)
Non-English Languages
- Afghan languages (including Pashto and Dari): Afghanistan Digital Library
- Alaskan languages (including Aleut, Alutiiq, Tlingit, and Yup’ik): Alaskan Orthodox Texts
- Arabic: Arabic Collections Online (10,000+ public domain volumes; at NYU)
- Armenian: Armenian House Library (Armenian section)
- Australian indigenous languages: CALL Collection (books and other literature, with many items digitized)
- Catalan / Valencian:
- Biblioteca Virtual Joan Lluís Vives (mostly Catalan materials)
- Selecció de Poesia Catalana (Catalan poetry)
- Chamorro: Chamorro Bible website (also has other Chamorro literature and language resources)
- Chinese:
- Chinese Text Project (annotated Chinese classics)
- Classical Languages:
- An Analytical Bibliography of On-Line Neo-Latin Titles (index of over 60,000 items, edited by Dana Sutton)
- Ancient Greek and Latin Texts (selected from Google Books)
- Bibliotheca Augustana (Latin texts arranged by century)
- Electronic Resources for Medieval Philosophy Studies: Digitized Books (at Boston College)
- The Latin Library (edited by William L. Carey)
- Project Libellus (at the University of Washington)
- Perseus Digital Library (classical Greek, Latin, and other texts at Tufts)
- Textkit (Greek and Latin learning tools)
- Vatican Library Digital Collections (mostly in Latin)
- Czech: National Library of the Czech Republic Digital Libraries
- Danish: Arkiv for Dansk Litteratur (in Denmark)
- Dutch:
- Ars Floreat (philosophy and religion texts in Dutch)
- Delpher (100 million pages of historic Dutch-language texts)
- Digitale Bibliotheek voor de Nederlandse Letteren
- Ethiopian languages: Virtual Hill Museum Reading Room (includes Ethiopian and other languages)
- Farsi (Persian):
- Ketab Farsi (Farsi books online)
- Persianbooks (index at blogspot.com)
- French:
- ATHENA e-texts
- ARTFL Public Databases (free portion of this French literature collection)
- Association des bibliophiles Universels (public domain French texts; in France)
- Ebooks Libres et Gratuits (2000+ public domain French language books)
- Les Classiques des Sciences Sociales (French-language social science classics; at U. du Québec)
- Gallica from the Bibliotheque Nationale de France (5 million+ documents in French and other languages)
- Marandet Collection of French Plays (several digitized collections from before 1789 through 1835; at Warwick)
- Gaelic:
- CELT Project (Irish electronic texts)
- Corpas Stairiúil na Gaeilge / Historical Irish Corpus, 1600-1926 (at Royal Irish Academy)
- German:
- Austrian Literature Online (Austrian works, mostly in German)
- Göttinger Digitalisierungszentrum (German and some English etexts)
- MATEO (Mannheim texts online)
- Sophie (work by German-speaking women; at BYU)
- Projekt Gutenberg-DE (German texts; no direct relation to the US-based Project Gutenberg)
- Religio (Texts in German on religion)
- WikiSource: Zeitschriften (list of links to digitized pre-1930 German periodicals)
- Zeno.org (free German literature)
- Hawaiian:
- Hawaiian Language Newspapers (at hawaii.edu)
- Ulukau: The Hawaiian Electronic Library
- Hebrew:
- Daat (includes medieval Jewish philosophy full texts)
- HebrewBooks.org (over 50,000 out of print Seforim and other classical Hebrew books)
- International Collection of Digitized Hebrew Manuscripts (at National Library of Israel)
- Mechon Mamre (classical Jewish texts and others)
- Project Ben-Yehuda (in Israel)
- Sefaria Library (religious texts in Hebrew and other languages)
- Tshuvos.com (Tshovos seforim)
- Yizkor Books (Holocaust memorial books; at NYPL)
- Hungarian: Magyar Elektronikus Könyvtár (Hungarian electronic library)
- Icelandic and Old Norse:
- Málið.is (Icelandic dictionaries and language resources)
- Netutgafan (classic Norse texts)
- Italian:
- Liber Liber (from Italy)
- Pelagus Letteratura Italiana (searchable index of Italian literature and sites)
- Indian languages:
- Granth Sanjeevani (rare books and other historic materials, many in Indian languages)
- National Digital Library of India (among other languages; registration required)
- Rekhta (poetry in Urdu and other languages)
- Japanese:
- Aozora Bunko (2000+ works of public domain Japanese literature)
- Database of Pre-Modern Japanese Works (from the National Institute of Japanese Literature)
- Japanese Censorship Collection (1000+ works submitted to imperial censors in the early 20th century)
- National Diet Library Digital Collections (hundreds of thousands of digital documents, mostly in Japanese)
- Korean:
- Kawai Collection (digitized Korean classical manuscripts and books)
- National Library of Korea Digitized Materials (mostly in Korean)
- Maori: Maori Niupepa Collection (newspapers written for Maori audience, 1842-1932)
- Mayan: Maya Hieroglyphic Writing: The Ancient Codices
- Polish:
- Staropolska (Old Polish literature)
- Wirtualna Biblioteka Literatury Polskiej (Virtual Library of Polish Literature)
- Portuguese:
- ebooksbrasil (Brazilian literature, mostly Portuguese)
- Jornal de Poesia (Portuguese poetry)
- Literatura Brasileira: Digital Library of Portuguese-Language Literature
- Projecto Vercial (Portuguese authors and literature)
- Romanian:
- Restitutio (digital platform of ‘Carol I’ Central University Library in Bucharest)
- Russian:
- Armenian House Library (Russian section)
- Sanskrit:
- Dvaita Text Resources (classic Hindu texts)
- Reading the Vedic Literature in Sanskrit (at Maharishi University)
- Sanskrit Documents (archive, index, and forum)
- Scandinavian Languages: Project Runeberg (from Sweden)
- Serbian (see also South Slavic Languages): Projekat Rastko (Serbian texts and images)
- Scots/Scottish: Scottish Corpus of Texts and Speech (in the UK; also has English)
- Slovak: Zlatý Fond (in Slovakia)
- Slovenian (see also South Slavic Languages):
- South Slavic languages (see also Serbian, Slovenian, etc.):
- Spanish:
- Biblioteca Virtual Miguel De Cervantes (Spanish texts; JavaScript-dependent)
- CLACSO (social science books in Spanish)
- Elaleph (Spanish-language PDF texts)
- Textos Lemir (medieval Spanish texts)
- Sumerian: Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (at Oxford)
- Swahili:
- Syriac: Syriac Studies Reference Library (at BYU; also includes texts in Latin and other languages)
- Tamil:
- Tibetan:
- Buddhist Digital Resource Center (Collection of Buddhist literature, mostly in Tibetan)
- Timeless Treasuries (Tibetan Buddhist literature from the Tsadra Foundation)
- Turkish:
- Uysal-Walker Archive of Turkish Oral Narrative (at Texas Tech)
- Wikilala (digitized Ottoman Turkish documents)
- Ukrainian: Electronic Library of Ukrainian Literature (at Toronto)
- Welsh:
- Llyfrgell Owen (online library of Welsh-language texts)
- National Library of Wales Digital Gallery (online materials in Welsh and English)
- Yiddish:
- Mendele Yiddish Texts
- Yiddish Book Center Digital Yiddish Library (11,000+ titles via archive.org)
- Yizkor Books (Holocaust memorial books; at NYPL)