Google Books is offering free downloads out-of-copyright books, including the complete works of Shakespeare!

Google, perhaps the world's most modern comp any, has just enabled the ability for anyone to download and print out most of the least modern books in existence.  Said another way, a search feature called Google Books allows users to download and print out-of-copyright books that it has scanned.  Google has active participation of a number of leading libraries has been scanning entire books that are now available online.  These libraries include the University of California, Harvard University, University of Michigan, The New York Public Library, Oxford University, and of course Stanford University (which is where Google was born).

The format of the downloads is PDF, which can be stored on your hard drive and read at your leisure.

This is a novel feature for anyone interested in learning more about books written a long time ago.  For instance, as a mathematician I enjoy looking back at how math books looked 100 years ago.  On a related note, Google's Google Books Blog says:

The Free Library – access to large collections of books was the privilege of a wealthy minority. Now, with the help of our wonderful library partners, we're able to offer you the ability to download and read PDF versions of out-of-copyright books from some of the world’s greatest collections.

And, by the way, chances are that you'll find Google Books' interface to these books sufficient for reading.  So do the environment a favor and refrain from printing out the books.  The environment thanks you!

Here's a link to the complete works of Shakespeare on Google Books.  By the way, this is a rare link embedded deep within Google, so please either bookmark it or this article.

Here are some other books available on Google Books that you can download, read and print if needed:

Ferriar's The Bibliomania
A futurist from 1881's 1931: A Glance at the Twentieth Century
Aesop's Fables
Shakespeare's Hamlet
Abbott's Flatland
Hugo's Marion De Lorme
Dunant's Eine Erinnerung an Solferino
Bolívar's Proclamas
Dante's Inferno

Of course, there are hundreds of thousands if not millions of books in Google Books.  You can try out a search here:

Comments

[victor]

For everyone’s info, we at Bookyards ( http://www.bookyards.com ) have compiled a good collection of digital libraries with books available for downloading for free. Just go to Bookyards “Library Collections - E Books” at http://www.bookyards.com/links.html?type=links&category_id=1780
There are approximately 350 digital libraries separated alphabetically and by category, with over 200,000 ebooks