This is another part of The Student Productivity Week. For the full list of articles see the overview, or at Scholastici.us.

Textbooks. No matter what way you look at them, they are a pain. They are heavy, expensive, and hard to understand. Everyday I see people struggling around their universities piled under a load of huge books.

This does not have to be anymore, thanks to the internet.

There are now a large collection of books available directly over the internet – no heavy lifting, no large debts. Simple!

The hardest part is to find these places, but look no further. Here is a list of the most important, easiest to access, and in general the best sites on the web. Here are Books on the Web:

Classics in the History of Psychology – Containing over 25 full books, and hundreds of articles, if you are a psych student you will never be lost again. For example, say you are looking for information about Sigmund Freud. Simply type in his name, and there you have it:
Psychopathology of Everyday Life, The Origin and Development of Psychoanalysis, The Interpretation of Dreams, and many more. All in full text for you to read instantly.

The Online Books Page – This is a directory of places you can download texts from. For example, type in Jane Austen, and there are dozens of places from which you can view the full works of Jane Austen. There is just so much information available at a click of the mouse.

eBrary.com – With more than 20,000 books, eBrary is virtually the perfect online book source. Unfortuantly, it does have a $5 sign up fee, but surely that is worth the price. Rather than purchasing textbooks, there can be a major saving for this online library. For my own sake I typed in the keyword ‘Thermodynamics’ and there were over 1500 results!

Google Books – Google had the bright idea of trying to insert every single book ever written onto the internet, unfortuantly they have not quite met my expectations. You are only allowed to view a view select pages of any one book, before being forced to buy it to see the rest. There are only a select few whose copyrights have expired, and you are allowed to download for free.

Project Gutenberg – Any book thats copyright has expired is available for free download from Project Guenberg. Some of the most popular books of all time are available here, as well as hundreds of others. With more than 20,000 free books, it is no surprise that some of them include Pride and Prejudice, Ulysses, Huckleberry Finnk, and The Iliad!

Hopefully this list will allow you to save several hundreds of dollars every year, especially if you are studying English Literature or something similar. Forget about lugging huge books to every class when there is such an easy and cost effective method available.

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