Online reading rooms

@RANDOM

Readers know the First Axiom of Book Buying by heart: the rate at which books will take over your home far exceeds the desperation with which you try to curb book-buying sprees. Imagine what happens, then, when the books in question are free and can be downloaded.

E-book sceptics who scoff at the thought of reading on screen haven't spent enough time in virtual libraries and bookstores. Here, from the simplest plain text file to the most complicated new digital reading formats, is a look at reading rooms on the Net.

Begin with two venerable sites. The Internet Public Library used to archive e-texts until recently, but it maintains perhaps the best and most sharply focused list of links to other resources on the web. Project Gutenberg, one of the largest and most popular virtual libraries, is perhaps the best-known e-book resource, though it runs to the plain keyed-in text over either scanned or digitised versions.

Many identify Michael Hart, its founder, as the pioneer of the e-book: the first "virtual book" he sent out, when he was just a student, was The Declaration of Independence.

Project Gutenberg has free, out-of-copyright books in languages ranging from Swedish to Farsi, though one of its most popular downloads ever didn't have much of a plot: it was just Pi to a million places.

A close rival is the Online Books Page, run by the University of Pennsylvania, most of whose books (from works on ecological dynamics to the spinechilling For Satan's Sake) are in PDF format.

Internet Public Library's link list:
http://www.ipl.org/div/subject/browse/hum60t.60.00/

Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page

Online Books Page:
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/search.html

http://www.planetpdf.com/index.asp

http://www.planetpdf.com/free_pdf_ebooks.asp?CurrentPage=1

Google's controversial plans to build the world's largest virtual library landed in trouble when publishers protested, but seems to have come back on track with a total of six of the world's biggest libraries offering to have their shelves scanned.

If Google's Library and Print projects work out, library services like ebrary will be hard pressed to retain their USP. For large organisations, though, ebrary's network allows access to journals, fresh academic research and the collected works of several libraries "" for a relatively high price, and Harvard, for one, recently decided that it couldn't afford ebrary.

Books @ Google: http://books.google.com, http://print.google.com, http://scholar.google.com

Ebrary: http://shop.ebrary.com/

What if you're looking for something more elevated than the latest Stephen King? Browse medieval illuminated manuscripts at Norway's national library, or locate rare Sanskrit stotras, or surf the slightly bizarre Sacred Texts site, which accords equal importance to the Vedas, the Bible, Evil and the Necronomicon.

Don't miss the British Library's splendid new exhibit, Turning the Pages, which lets you explore Mercator's Atlas, The Diamond Sutra, Alice in Wonderland and other wonders online.

A guide to online medieval manuscripts:
http://home.hetnet.nl/~otto.vervaart/ manuscripts_me_eng.htme

Illuminated manuscripts: http://www.kb.nl/kb/manuscripts/

Indology's guide to ancient Indian texts:
http://indology.info/etexts/

Turning the Pages:
http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/ttp/ttpbooks.html

Sacred Texts: http://www.sacred-texts.com/index.htm

By this time next year, websites that offer e-books in text-only format might be a vanishing species, if Sony has its way. I'm not a fan of version one of the Sony Reader, an e-book reader that scores high on look and feel but low on functionality, but I did like their E-Books Connect site.

It's just as usable and well-organised as the iTunes store, though whether Sony will clone the iPod's success as well as the trademark user-friendly feel of that online music store is an open question.

Sony's e-bookstore: http://ebooks.connect.com/