Searching, Reading, and Downloading Online Books - Summary

For more details on some of the following listings as well as links to other resources, check this SBL article and this blog posting.

• Google Book Search - Note that you can choose only those books with "Full View." Such books are downloadable, or, with a Google account, you can add them to your online 'library.' Many books have an "About this book" link that provides considerable additional information.
  • Bible, Judaism, and Christianity via Google Book Search
  • Free Books in Biblical Studies and Related Fields (Google, Archive.org, etc.)
• Microsoft Live Book Search - Similar to Google Books, but different books have been digitized and different copyrights obtained. (E.g., Schweitzer's Quest is available for download here but not on Google.)
• Universal Digital Libary - Over a million books are digitized, and it includes books that are not available in either GoogleBook or Microsoft LiveBook.
• manybooks.net. About 20,000 volumes available which really isn't that many. What is unique about this site is the variety of formats available for each book, including Kindle, iPhone, iSilo, Plucker, in addition to PDF, DOC, RTF, HTML, etc.
• Google Scholar and Microsoft Live Search Academic: Another pair of search engines that look in journal articles, dissertations, and books.
• Tyndale House Library Catalogue
• Internet Archive: Actually two places to search: Internet Archive Texts and The Open Library
  
• Amazon's Search Inside feature: If you search on Amazon for keywords, it not only looks at titles, but it also look inside books. This only applies to some books which have the "Search Inside" feature indicating that the books have been scanned.
• Book Burro - A Firefox addin that searches WorldCat for nearby books as well as cheapest online prices.