Open/Free University/Academic Presses

[SJC-Caron]

I hope that this forum will eventually join the sticky posts in the Deals, Freebies, & Resources forum. This thread’s purpose is to list academic and other high-quality publishers that has many of their e-books downloadable for free. I’ll start off this thread with three of them:

Athabasca University Press
Mostly non-fiction books with a Canadian and Western Canada focus with some fiction and poetry as well. You can download entire books (or select chapters, your choice) for most books on the site in PDF for free.

OpenStax College
Textbooks that are geared towards people taking introductory college/university courses in the most common subjects. Used to have their books available in ePubs but now only PDF and on-line versions are available.

Springer Link
Mix of specialized closed and open access (paid and free) articles, books, etc. from a wide variety of academic fields and in several major languages. Documents are in PDF.

NEW March 2019
Standard EBooks
Appreciate the free books on sites like Project Gutenberg but wish their epub formatting was cleaned-up better, then this may be the site for you. Out-of copyright books are available in epub, epub3, azw3, and kepub. A similar site is Global Grey eBooks, which has more book available but tends to use a lighter hand when formatting the books for specific ebook formats.

[GtrsRGr8]

Originally Posted by SJC-Caron

I hope that this forum will eventually join the sticky posts in the Deals, Freebies, & Resources forum. This thread’s purpose is to list academic and other high-quality publishers that has many of their e-books downloadable for free. I’ll start off this thread with three of them:

Athabasca University Press
Mostly non-fiction books with a Canadian and Western Canada focus with some fiction and poetry as well. You can download entire books (or select chapters, your choice) for most books on the site in PDF for free.

OpenStax College
Textbooks that are geared towards people taking introductory college/university courses in the most common subjects. Used to have their books available in ePubs but now only PDF and on-line versions are available.

Springer Link
Mix of specialized closed and open access (paid and free) articles, books, etc. from a wide variety of academic fields and in several major languages. Documents are in PDF.

Welcome to posting at MobileRead.

Great post. I personally love knowing about websites like you mentioned.

[Froide]

Great thread topic! Thank you for starting this.

eBooks@Adelaide: Free Books, Online

eBooks@Adelaide, The University of Adelaide Library's Electronic Text Collection, is a collection of web book editions of significant works from the past.

[Froide]

Download free eBooks - OpenLearn - Open University

Inspired by the BBC Four series The Secret Life of Books, we have produced a collection of free eBooks for you to download and enjoy.

[Froide]

Free Online eBooks - Cambridge University Library

Free ebooks collections. You may be interested in the following free ebooks. Please note that individual records will not appear in a search of LibrarySearch or Newton.

[Froide]

UC Press E-Books Collection, 1982-2004

UC Press E-Books Collection, 1982-2004, includes almost 2,000 books from academic presses on a range of topics, including art, science, history, music, religion, and fiction.

Access to the entire collection of electronic books is open to all University of California faculty, staff, and students, while more than 700 of the titles are available to the public. Print versions of many of the electronic books can be purchased directly from the publishers.

Article about the collection, which includes links to numerous other sources of free media (art & images, audiobooks, courses, ebooks, language lessons, movies, music, and more): "Read 700 Free eBooks Made Available by the University of California Press"

The University of California Press e-books collection holds books published by UCP (and a select few printed by other academic presses) between 1982-2004. The general public currently has access to 770 books through this initiative. The collection is dynamic, with new titles being added over time.

Readers looking to see what the collection holds can browse by subject. The curators of the site have kindly provided a second browsing page that shows only the publicly accessible books, omitting any frustrating off-limits titles.

The collection’s strengths are in history (particularly American history and the history of California and the West); religion; literary studies; and international studies (with strong selections of Middle Eastern Studies, Asian Studies, and French Studies titles).

A quick browse yields a multitude of interesting possibilities for future reading: Shelley Streeby’s 2002 book about sensational literature and dime novels in the nineteenth-century United States; Luise White’s intriguing-looking Speaking with Vampires: Rumor and History in Colonial Africa (2000); and Karen Lystra’s 2004 re-examination of Mark Twain’s final years. (The image above comes from another Twain text by Randall Knoper.) Two other noteworthy texts include Roland Barthes’ Incidents and Hugh Kenner’s Chuck Jones: A Flurry of Drawings.

Sadly, you can’t download the books to an e-reader or tablet. Happily, there is a “bookbag” function that you can use to store your titles, if you need to leave the site and come back.

As always, we’d encourage you to visit our collection of 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kindle & Other Devices, where we recently added texts by Vladimir Nabokov, Philip K. Dick and others. Also find free courses in our list of 1150 Free Online Courses from Top Universities.

[Froide]

NOTE: - NOTE: The source materials contain multiple links and images not copied here

Article: "Free: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Guggenheim Offer 474 Free Art Books Online" (August 5, 2013) | Open Culture

If you like reading about visual art but don’t like spending the considerable sums required to build your own library of vintage exhibition catalogues, feel free to borrow from another collector. Or rather, feel free to borrow from two collectors, both based in New York, both of some repute: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Early last year, we announced that the Guggenheim had made 65 art catalogues [now increased to 99] available for free online, offering “an intellectual and visual introduction to the work of Alexander Calder, Edvard Munch, Francis Bacon, Gustav Klimt & Egon Schiele, and Wassily Kandinsky” as well as ” other texts (e.g., Masterpieces of Modern Art and Abstract Expressionists Imagists) that tackle meta movements and themes.” (That same post includes instructions on how to use the Guggenheim’s archive.)

Late last year, we also announced the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s launch of MetPublications, which will “eventually offer access to nearly all books, Bulletins, and Journals” published by the Met since 1870. The collection now features a whopping 375 free art books and catalogues overall. Taken together, these collections examine in detail art from all eras of human history and all parts of the world. At the top of the post, you will see the cover for the Met’s The Art of Illumination. (Who doesn’t love illuminated Medieval manuscripts?) Below appears Sixty Years of Living Architecture: The Work of Frank Lloyd Wright, available from the Guggenheim. Given the presence of these and the other fascinating catalogues we’ve previously highlighted, word of these two museums’ online libraries certainly shouldn’t stay buried in our archives.

Guggenheim Publications
As a vital part of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation’s mission as an educational institution, the Guggenheim Museum’s Publishing and Digital Media Department publishes books and catalogues to document its exhibitions and collections. Guggenheim publications are renowned for the high quality of their design and production, as well as for the depth of their scholarship.

Our publications site highlights New Releases and Upcoming publications. The Syllabus offers points of entry into the Guggenheim’s rich publication archives, with suggested readings on historical themes, topics, and trends, as well as links for further exploration.

MetPublications
"Five decades of Met publications on art history, available to read, download, and/or search for free."

About MetPublications

MetPublications is a portal to the Met's comprehensive publishing program with 1,500 titles, including books, online publications, and Bulletins and Journals from the last five decades.

MetPublications includes a description and table of contents for most titles, as well as information about the authors, reviews, awards, and links to related Met titles by author and by theme. Current book titles that are in-print may be previewed and fully searched online, with a link to purchase the book. The full contents of almost all other book titles may be read online, searched, or downloaded as a PDF. Many of these out-of-print books will be available for purchase, when rights permit, through print-on-demand capabilities in association with Yale University Press. For the Met's Bulletin, all but the most recent issue can be downloaded as a PDF. For the Met's Journal, all individual articles and entire volumes can be downloaded as a PDF.

Readers may also locate works of art from the Met's collections that are included in every book and periodical title and access the most recent information about these works in Collections.

Readers are also directed to every title located in library catalogues on WATSONLINE and WorldCat.

Please check back frequently for updates and new book titles.

[Froide]

Originally Posted by SJC-Caron

I hope that this forum will eventually join the sticky posts in the Deals, Freebies, & Resources forum. This thread’s purpose is to list academic and other high-quality publishers that has many of their e-books downloadable for free. I’ll start off this thread with three of them:

Athabasca University Press
Mostly non-fiction books with a Canadian and Western Canada focus with some fiction and poetry as well. You can download entire books (or select chapters, your choice) for most books on the site in PDF for free.

OpenStax College
Textbooks that are geared towards people taking introductory college/university courses in the most common subjects. Used to have their books available in ePubs but now only PDF and on-line versions are available.

Springer Link
Mix of specialized closed and open access (paid and free) articles, books, etc. from a wide variety of academic fields and in several major languages. Documents are in PDF.

As I stated in my first post here, this is a great thread topic! And thank you for creating it.

May I suggest, since this thread is not limited to academic presses, expanding the thread's title to read something like, "Open/Free University/Academic/Other High Quality Presses"?

[ekbell]

University of Adelaide Press
https://www.adelaide.edu.au/press/titles/
Free PDF's are available for all titles.

The Rockefeller University Press
http://books.rupress.org/
A number of science oriented books are free in your choice of ebook format although you do need to go through the regular check-out.

Leuven University Press
http://upers.kuleuven.be/en/free-ebooks?
Offers a large number of free books in a number of languages in PDF format. Several books are collections of papers and essays in multiple languages.

OAPEN Library
http://www.oapen.org/search?browse-all=yes is a collection of open access books from a number of publishers (includes non-English books).

[GtrsRGr8]

Originally Posted by Froide

Download free eBooks - OpenLearn - Open University

Thanks. I was aware of the other sites to get free ebooks, but I wasn't aware that a person could get free ebooks at Open University.

[GtrsRGr8]

Originally Posted by ekbell

University of Adelaide Press
https://www.adelaide.edu.au/press/titles/
Free PDF's are available for all titles.

The Rockefeller University Press
http://books.rupress.org/
A number of science oriented books are free in your choice of ebook format although you do need to go through the regular check-out.

Leuven University Press
http://upers.kuleuven.be/en/free-ebooks?
Offers a large number of free books in a number of languages in PDF format. Several books are collections of papers and essays in multiple languages.

OAPEN Library
http://www.oapen.org/search?browse-all=yes is a collection of open access books from a number of publishers (includes non-English books).

I was aware of the other sites to get free ebooks, but I wasn't aware of Leuven University Press. And just a quick look makes me think that they've got a lot of good ones, and ones "right up my alley." Thanks.

It is the existence of all of these open access ebooks that make me wish that I had taken German, Russian, Norwegian, Spanish, Finnish, Italian . . . in school. And that I had paid better attention in French! Of course, I'm sure that I could find an open access course to take on each of the above languages to remedy the situation. ha

[SJC-Caron]

@Froide:
When I figure-out how to change a thread title after-the-fact I will, thanks.

[GtrsRGr8]

Originally Posted by SJC-Caron

@Froide:
When I figure-out how to change a thread title after-the-fact I will, thanks.

Click on "Go Advanced" at the bottom righthand corner of the edit box. That will open a box which allows you to edit the title.

[Little.Egret]

Originally Posted by Froide

Download free eBooks - OpenLearn - Open University

See also http://www.open.ac.uk/

and

http://www.amazon.com/s/?url=search-...pen+university

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/?url=searc...pen+university
http://www.amazon.ca/s/?url=search-a...pen+university

[WillAdams]

I would be surprised if the books from these sites were not already listed at: http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu

If any aren't listed there, please submit them: http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/suggest.html