Open/Free University/Academic Presses

[GtrsRGr8]

UPDATE: It looks like you have to be a student (= pay money) to follow all of the links, except probably for the ones which say "open access" at the far right of each link.

More info later. G

Originally Posted by Little.Egret

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

This is a great lead. Thanks.

I didn't see a link to ebooks, at the webpages that you linked to. I went rummaging around the site and found this webpage of links. It gives links to other websites, which actually have the ebooks.

I followed a link or two on that page. Each time it required a log in with membership information. I didn't feel inclined to set up an account right now. Maybe one or more of you have an account already or already have one and would be willing to investigate and let the rest of us know what you find?

The webpage with the links will be very helpful, I think. I thought that I already knew about most of the websites (on the entire Web!) that had free ebooks. Turns out, I was wrong. There are many on the list that I didn't recognize! But I noticed that most of the ones that I didn't recognize give ebooks on narrow, specialized topics. My bruised ego was assuaged.

[GtrsRGr8]

Originally Posted by 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

Yes, that is a good website. Thanks.

This may be the ego rearing its ugly head again, but I don't trust this or any other single website to have anywhere near an exhaustive list of free ebooks nor to list anywhere near all of the other websites which have them. I think that I know of websites with many more additional ebooks to what they have listed. I do appreciate the fact that they ask viewers to submit any ebooks that aren't listed on their site. I wonder how many people actually do it, though (I confess: I'm one who is guilty of not doing it).

The Internet Archive probably comes closest to having all of the freebies (Google Books earns the Honorable Mention award), if for no other reason than it seems to be the best known website of its kind.* However, I know of no way to sift out the wheat from the chaff--the ebooks which are in the public domain because their copyrights have expired (generally much less desirable) from quality free ebooks that have been recently published (generally much more desirable). Maybe they will address that shortcoming (as I perceive it) by instituting something like a customer feedback and/or rating, system on at least for the non-public-domain-type books.

So, as for me, I'll keep checking upenn's website, and websites like them, but I'll also keep looking for ones that they have missed.

* The founder of the Internet Archive, whose name I have forgotten, has a goal of getting a copy of every book ever printed that is still extant (sadly, many have disappeared forever). While third parties have made a huge number of scans and submitted them, IA does a lot of their own scanning. People send IA books from places all over the world. After scanning the books, the IA stores the physical books in a facility in or around San Francisco. It's a very interesting story.

[ATDrake]

For "download each chapter of a PDF individually" values of portable non-DIY e-bookness, textbook publisher DeGruyter does have downloadable versions of its open access books. It's mostly technical science and theology-type things, but there's also some arts & culture like: Made in Canada, Read in Spain: Essays on the Translation and Circulation of English-Canadian Literature

The Summer Institute of Linguistics has a very nice set of language and ethnology-related works by their members in PDF format. It's pretty specialized, but they're one of my top resources for certain types of linguistics-related things, including some very useful fonts and software.

For those who are into language learning, they've also an educational project for translating free traditional tales-from-around-the-world storybooks and simple educational factbooks for children into multiple global languages, exportable as PDF (and they plan to have a proper eBook export function eventually), and you can participate (or just download the results) here: Bloom Library project (overview of free software for DIY)

Duke Law University's Center for the Study of the Public Domain only has a few downloadables listed among its publications (a few more can be read online). But they're very topical for MR, and have an excellent and recommended comic book about the public domain, available in multiple languages, along with a few more technical things about IP law, etc..

[Manabi]

Packt Publishing offers a free book every day, although the selection is random. These are all computer/networking stuff. I've been grabbing them nearly every day since August or so and have built up quite a collection. Most books are available in DRM-free Epub, Mobi and PDF formats. Some are only available in PDF, but in my experience those are pretty rare. (Three out of 176 total eBooks.)

If you do take advantage of it, be sure to check the E-mails Packt Publishing sends out. They sent me a coupon for a free eBook of my choice once, no strings attached.

[Little.Egret]

Originally Posted by Little.Egret

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

Now with more freebies including

Discovering management by The Open University

This free course, Discovering management, introduces you to the role of the manager, it covers management activities looking at leadership, human resources, finance, project management, change management, operations management and stakeholder management.

Veiling (76pp) by The Open University

This unit explores controversies associated with the practice of "veiling" within Islam. The Islamic 'veil', be it in the form of the hijab, niqab, jilbab or burqa (we shall explore this terminology in more detail later), has been at the centre of many different controversies. Many of these controversies can be understood in the context of debates about different citizenship models and different understandings of the roles, rights and demands of faith groups in society. In some instances, such controversies have resulted in legal disputes and the creation of new laws.

Science in the Scottish Enlightenment by The Open University

How is it that a small, poor country in northern Europe became one of the most dynamic centres of Enlightenment thinking? This unit examines the cultural, intellectual and religious characteristics of Scotland in the eighteenth century that led to the emergence of such intellectual pioneers as James Hutton, Joseph Black and William Cullen, and briefly describes their key ideas and findings.

[GtrsRGr8]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

For "download each chapter of a PDF individually" values of portable non-DIY e-bookness, textbook publisher DeGruyter does have downloadable versions of its open access books.
<snip>

I consider these to be awesome finds. I'm sending you all of the karma that the system will allow me to send!

I must be slipping. In the last few weeks I happen to have been at 3 out of 4 of the sites that you gave (all but the Bloom Library one) looking for pages like you gave, without finding them.

[GtrsRGr8]

Originally Posted by Little.Egret

Now with more freebies
<snip>

Awesome finds also. Thanks.

I would like to get advice from you all about a matter. Between what you and ATDrake have come up with, there are a large number of books that I'm thinking about downloading. I'm not actually wanting to start reading or referencing any of them right away. I want to download them and add them to my library because of concern that they may not be available on the Internet in the future, for some reason, if I should go searching for them. What do you all think? Is this a legitimate concern? It is a little bit of hassle to download, rename, etc. all of these books. It would be nice to avoid all of that and just depend on them being on the Internet when I'm ready to read or reference them.

[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by GtrsRGr8

I want to download them and add them to my library because of concern that they may not be available on the Internet in the future, for some reason, if I should go searching for them. What do you all think? Is this a legitimate concern?

Not to make you paranoid, but the Duke Law University link is one that I originally dug up for another MR member's request for freely-redistributable DRM-free educational resources several years ago. When I went to look for some stuff again to post in this thread, almost all of it had moved (DLU's CSPD among them, and I had a fun time guessing which terms to use when trying to find it again via their university's site search on the "page not found" page until I gave up and straight-up googled the title of the comic book, which I happen to own in a paper edition) and some of it seems decidedly unavailable even on other sites (though they may perhaps be preserved in the Wayback Machine).

DeGruyter also changed the link for their open access collection from the one that was originally listed on several other older webpages, and in the many years that I've been using them, SIL has significantly rearranged their website several times that I've noticed (they usually leave redirect links up, though).

So, personally, I'd think that anything you might even have the slightest interest in even just looking at again, you should save like you were auditioning for your very own reality TV hoarding show. YMMV.

[Doitsu]

The University of Texas at Austin offers a free introductory Persian language textbook for download as .pdf files:

Persian of Iran Today

[Little.Egret]

Originally Posted by GtrsRGr8

I would like to get advice from you all about a matter. Between what you and ATDrake have come up with, there are a large number of books that I'm thinking about downloading. I'm not actually wanting to start reading or referencing any of them right away. I want to download them and add them to my library because of concern that they may not be available on the Internet in the future, for some reason, if I should go searching for them. What do you all think? Is this a legitimate concern?

I would agree with ATDrake. On a one year time scale you are mostly safe enough but beyond that I suggest downloading and saving in multiple places.

I have been able to retrieve some items from the WayBack Machine but not all.

Of course freebies in Amazon's cloud are probably safe on a ten year scale but safer to save.

[Manabi]

Originally Posted by GtrsRGr8

Awesome finds also. Thanks.

I would like to get advice from you all about a matter. Between what you and ATDrake have come up with, there are a large number of books that I'm thinking about downloading. I'm not actually wanting to start reading or referencing any of them right away. I want to download them and add them to my library because of concern that they may not be available on the Internet in the future, for some reason, if I should go searching for them. What do you all think? Is this a legitimate concern? It is a little bit of hassle to download, rename, etc. all of these books. It would be nice to avoid all of that and just depend on them being on the Internet when I'm ready to read or reference them.

Free digital stuff (eBooks/music/videos) gets taken down all the time. I've learned this the hard way over the years. (There's been a couple of webcomics I enjoyed that the website no longer even exists, the domain expired and the comics are lost to the world, for example.) So if you think you might want it in the future, grab it now. You don't really have to go through and add it all into Calibre immediately. Just save it all into a folder for sorting in the future and go through it as you have time and add it gradually.

I do this with everything now. I don't count on even Amazon keeping my eBooks available for the long term. And I have my Calibre library backed up in the cloud as well as locally.

[GtrsRGr8]

Here is a website with lists of organizations with open access publications. They are not all schools. I don't know how exhaustive or complete the lists are, but I think that they are close to it.

There are so many organizations now with open access content that they are organized by continent, then individual country. Also, you can do searches for items on particular subjects, across all of the organizations. Links near the top of the webpage whose link that I gave you above will get you to both of those.

There is another site, actually, a couple of them, which lists organizations with open access content. But when I did a search of my browser's bookmarks a few minutes ago, I didn't see them. I will look again later or, more likely, I'll run across them before then while looking for something else.

ADDENDUM: BTW-"open access" is not necessarily free. Some organizations will offer "open access" content, but charge for it. There was one site that I was at a day or two ago that had two tiers of what they called "open access." One tier had completely free books and the other one they labelled "freemium." Well, there was nothing "free" about that content, although they may have been (I don't remember noticing) selling the books at less than their value was or what comparable ebooks would sell for.

[ATDrake]

Canadian law publisher Irwin Law has something they call "Content Commons", with a selection of essay collections about intellectual property, copyright law, and other related topics, featuring contributions by scholars and other legal thinkers.

Currently, there are four of them up, including two edited by prominent Canadian copyright reform advocate Michael Geist (Wikipedia). You can download them chapter-by-chapter in PDF format after clicking their agreement tickybox, which basically just says that you won't be violating the Creative Commons terms that these are offered under.

[ekbell]

I just found https://open.bccampus.ca/ which currently has links to 231 open access textbooks in a variety of subjects.

[GtrsRGr8]

Originally Posted by ekbell

I just found https://open.bccampus.ca/ which currently has links to 231 open access textbooks in a variety of subjects.

Thanks. There are websites which purport to list all open access books published in a particular country, or a continent, or even the _world_. I'm more than a little skeptical regarding the comprehensiveness of these sites, and am always happy to learn of other such websites that list open access ebooks.