Finding Archival Collections and Primary Documents

For a book to be legally digitized and available online, either the holder of the copyright has to give permission for the digitization, or the book needs to be in the public domain. In the U.S., currently books in the public domain are usually those that were published prior to 1927, although under certain limited conditions later works may also be in the public domain. Books that are freely available online will be those that are in the public domain.

Hathi Trust

The HathiTrust Digital Library includes millions of books, government publications, dissertations, journals, and other published and unpublished materials. Created by a partnership of academic and research institutions, the Library offers materials digitized from collections in libraries around the world. Titles published prior to 1927 and those that are open access or Creative Commons-licensed are available full-text. Other materials include limited-access searching.

Internet Archive

Search the "Texts" files for specific titles or books on particular subjects.