This is one of the most overlooked and under-rated sites I've come across recently.

If you're a student, particularly a College or University student, you've probably had many professors assert, "Use of online material and information is NOT acceptable in this course," "Don't let me catch you grabbing facts from internet websites," "For goodness sakes, don't go by what Wikipedia says!" or other similar warnings.

It is true that much of the information you'll find online that is called 'true information' and 'good source' is mainly based on opinion - or that many online authors have compiled articles based exclusively or almost exclusively on information gathered from more online sources. This means that most of your higher level education professors ARE, in fact, giving good advice or fair warnings about 'content online'! Content that cannot be traced back to a valid and respectable souce should not become your main source of information.

IPL - Internet Public Library, however, is a very good starting place for higher-edu students - and a general public alike - if individuals are looking for online reading and information.

IPL will often lead you to more appropriate sources and, for serious students, much of the article content at IPL will direct the reader right to educational sources that are valid and acceptable by most educators!

IPL doesn't host all of the content and titles listed right on the IPL site. There are a ton of excellent 'out-links' to University and College sites, research sites, and other valid article sources whereby the 'out-linked' sites provide 'full-text' books, articles and other documents.

Internet Public Library acts much like a very large directory of reading materials, and has a good selection of topics and categories.

Categories such as "Arts and Humanities" lead to a nice list of reputable archives sites, other topic-specific libraries online, many educational institutions, and the like. From this main topic, you'll also have the option to browse into sub-topics like 'classics,' 'fine arts,' 'history,' 'language and linguistics,' 'museums,' 'philosophy' and even 'religion and theology,' so that your 'search' can be fine-tuned and you can find what you're looking for.

I've noticed that several times when I've been on the IPL site, there are 'same-links' showing up for different topic searches and sub-headings. This is quite helpful for the times when I show up on-site, not quite positive of what I am looking for in the beginning. The way that topics are categorized is with respect to the fact that many edu-disciplines are inter-connected. This kind of categorization sorting means that I won't miss inter-related aspects of topics I am looking for - or I won't forget easily that 'history' easily borrows educational material from 'culture studies,' or that 'classics' texts may also be found under 'literature' or 'religion' or 'language' topics, from time to time.

Visit The IPL Website - Internet Public Library

www.ipl.org

Search eBooks .com

is basically a search engine which will turn out a list of results for whatever term/book title you enter and submit into the search engine.

Yes, you can pretty much do the same thing just with Google search, Yahoo, or other search engines, however, in the search results for searchebooks .com, part of the results specifically indicate details about how much text (full version, preview, snippet, limited preview or other amount of pages) is available for online reading.

You can do the same with plain old google search engine, but will additionally have to visit the website google lists in order to find these details on-site.

Using searchebooks just aligns a few details nicely to help you avoid a few extra clicks versus using plain old, general search engine searching.

You can get to the 'googlebooks' feature of Google search engine quite easily by typing in: books - dot - google - dot - com into your browser address/location window.

There are topics/categories available in the left-hand sidebar to get you started off in googlebooks, or if you know a title or portion of a title you're looking for, just type this into the search window at the top of the page. You can also start your search with an author's name, genre or topic.

After a click on one of the category headings - or after an initial title or topic search, you should have end up with a listing that shows several book covers. If these are what you're looking for, just click on the book you want to view. Alternately, if you intend to find particular formats, you will now be able to select "All books" "Limited and full preview" and "Full view only," from a little blue divider bar near the top of your screen. The selections are in the divider bar in a drop-down menu, all of which is easily visible and easy to use.

When I want to read an entire book online, I select the 'Full view only' option, and then googlebooks shows me only text that is free to read, in full, online.

I have found that there are a whole lot of full volumes of poetry online that googlebooks allows quick and easy access to.

If you're not 'studying' or using the texts and books you're searching for as study materials for any kind of schooling, you'll probably find a LOT of good reading by using googlebooks.

Unfortunately, there are way more 'previews' than full text and full versions of books online, however, I have still found that many 'googlebook' links end up leading to sites that still allow you to end up reading 'entire version' contents online. Sometimes all that is necessary for ending up with a 'full version' - is allowing yourself to go on a 'mailing list,' say at one of the science fiction story sites.

Portions of books and 'preview' pieces aren't always a 'rip off' or a bad thing, either, particularly if you showed up at googlebooks looking for some new leisure reading material. Previews and 'portions only' will at least allow you to read enough to find out whether or not you're enjoying a certain author or book.

BOOKMARK some of the 'portion only' and preview pages that you do find, because I have found that sometimes, a week or month later, a different 'portion' of a book is listed, or a different set of preview pages is listed in the googlebooks book search engine!

I have been able to read full books before that were originally listed with 'preview only' on them!

There are A TON of 'philosophy' 'classics' and 'religion' full books online that are available through googlebooks, so if titles in these categories interest you, then you'll use googlebooks a lot and come to really love googlebooks!

Project Gutenberg is updated daily

Project Gutenbrg Main Page

Most of Project Gutenberg's books and texts are downloadable in plain text format. Usually the downloads are zipped and very easy to manage.

Many books and eBooks on this site are very old - 80+ years or better. Some material is scanned from original sources, then put into text format that is easy for download or reading online - other bits are translated into English by volunteers.

Likely, if you're heading over to Project Gutenberg, you're not going to find a lot of fast-action, 'hip', current authors or new materials.

If you're an English, Philosophy, Cultural Studies, History, or Theology student, Project Gutenberg is going to be a fun site for you to browse and spend a lot of time on.

Also, if you're going to be able to figure out and observe copyright details and you do a lot of editing and re-publishing, Project Gutenberg will be a site you'll spend many hours browsing. There are thousands and thousands of public domain pieces on-site, and this site is a virtual goldmine for those who know how to deal in public domain compilations and collections of classics works.

TItles like 'The Art of War,' 'Bullfinch's Mythology,' 'The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope, Volume 1," 'The Boy Scout's Book of Campife Stories,' 'Paradise Lost,' 'Beowulf,' ah, the list goes on and on...

I just clicked the 'Top 100' link at Project Gutenberg and, as is typical when I do this about 3-10 times per month, an excellent list of titles appears. These are mostly works that English or History/Philosophy students will drool over. Authors like Jules Verne, Mark Twain, James Joyce, Charles Dickens, John Milton, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Jane Austen, Franz Kafka, Niccolo Machiavelli, and a storehouse of other great writers and thinkers is abundant at this site.

Project Gutenberg also out-links often to the 'ibiblio' website, but I have rarely ended up at ibiblio while browsing P-Gutenberg, so I have yet to check out this secondary site to any degree. I'll add what I find out about ibiblio to this hub within a month or two, but trust me - if you really are in need of older text, classics collections, and such - Project Gutenberg will be an excellent site for you and you're very likely to find what you're looking for within minutes!

Searching is very easy at Project Gutenberg. In the left-hand sidebar, right on the mainpage, you can search by Author, Title or E-Text number. Use this area if you have something specific to search for.

If you're just browsing and are interested in seeing some older original material, the 'Top 100' link is mid-page, and will practically jump out and bonk you on the nose!

Use the Top 100 link to just browse some interesting titles and figure out what you might want to start reading. This list is made from Project Gutenberg keeping track of what titles are downloaded daily. On the Top 100 page, you'll also find links for Top 100 Authors (recorded from previous-day downloads, from 'yesterday'), Top 100 eBooks for the past 7 days and both Top Authors and Top eBooks over 30 days.

The above lists seem to help me a lot when I head to the P-Gutenberg site to just browse, and when I'm not going there to track down any specific title or author's works.

Enjoy!