[Reader-list] searching for free libraries on the net

[Trisha Gupta]

Hi Vivek,
Just came across this site -
http://eserver.org/
which seems to have a huge variety of books online - including
novels, plays and academic books.

This is what it says it about itself: "The EServer is a growing
online community where hundreds of writers, artists, editors and
scholars gather to publish and discuss their works.

In today's world of corporate publishing, value is placed on works
that sell to broad markets. Quick turnover, high-visibility
marketing campaigns for bestsellers, and corporate "superstore"
bookstores have all made it difficult for unique and older texts to
be published. (Further, the costs this marketing adds to all books
discourage people from leisure reading as a common practice.) And
publishers tend to encourage authors to write books with strong
appeal to the current, undermining (if unknowingly) writings with
longer-term implications.

The EServer (founded fifteen years ago, in 1990 at Carnegie Mellon
as the English Server), attempts to provide an alternative niche
for quality work, particularly writings in the arts and humanities.
Now based at Iowa State University, we offer 45 collections on such
diverse topics as art, architecture, race, Internet studies,
sexuality, drama, design, multimedia, and current social issues. In
addition to short and longer written works, we publish hypertext and
streaming audio and video recordings. Our collections grow as
increased membership has new works to publish with us, and as we
teach new members how to publish works to the Web and to the more
than million readers who visit our site per month."

Trisha


Quoting Vivek Narayanan <vivek at sarai.net>:

> Hi,
>
> I'm trying to put together a list of links to free books
> available on
> the net; we all know about Gutenberg and Bartleby, but I'm
> specifically
> looking for books published after 1930 or so, which might have
> gone up
> as a result of initiatives by university presses or other groups.
>  Large
> excerpts are good, but entire books are better.  And I'm
> especially
> looking for links to sites with a number of books on them.
>
> Do send me any links you have, and I will compile and repost the
> link
> collection to this list.
>
> As a starter, I offer this, UC Press's public archive:
> http://texts.cdlib.org/ucpress/authors_public.html
>
> It's a very nice collection, including such classic recent stuff
> like
> Timothy Mitchell's Colonising Egypt, the collected essays of
> Robert
> Creeley, south asian regional stuff, and so on.
>
> Looking forward to hearing more-- let's map this thing out.
>
> Vivek
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