Books
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Books are a concept, a collection format, a way of organizing ideas; including ebooks, textbooks, picturebooks and others. There are many sources of Free books in the public domain, or under GFDL, various Creative Commons, and other licenses.
Other languages: see Spanish (and Libros), Portuguese
Books
Textbooks
Computer Science
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[[]] : Dive into Python, an introduction to Python programming edit Maintainers: Seth Woodworth · License: GFDL · Mime types: .html |
Download v.1 · [[[Image:Diveintopython.xol]] source] Tested in: (trac) Translate: · |
Computer Algebra
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[[]] : Axiom Tutorial by Timothy Daly edit Maintainers: Timothy Daly · License: Modified BSD · Mime types: .pdf |
Download v.IBSN 1-4116-65097-X · [[1] source] Tested in: (trac) Translate: · |
Mathematics
See also: http://www.digitalculture.org/index.html and http://openmathtext.org/downloads.html
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[[]] : Linear Algebra by Jim Hefferon edit Maintainers: · License: CC-BY-SA · Mime types: .pdf |
Download v. · [joshua.smcvt.edu/linalg.html/ source] Tested in: (trac) Translate: · |
Calculus
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[[]] : Mathematics under the Microscope by Alexandre V. Borovik edit The book explores the intersection of mathematics and cognitive science. Maintainers: · License: CC-BY-NC-ND2.0 · Mime types: .pdf |
[[:Media:-[0.919 http://www.maths.manchester.ac.uk/~avb/micromathematics/MMW.pdf].xo|Download v.[0.919 http://www.maths.manchester.ac.uk/~avb/micromathematics/MMW.pdf]]] · [www.maths.manchester.ac.uk/~avb/micromathematics/downloads source] Tested in: (trac) Translate: · |
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[[]] : "Difference Equations to Differential Equations" An introduction to calculus, by Dan Sloughter edit The book is split into sections, with each section being its own PDF. There are links to solutions. There are Java Applets for some sections. Maintainers: Dan Sloughter · License: CC-BY-SA · Mime types: .html, .pdf, .ps, .js, .class |
Download v. · [math.furman.edu/~dcs/book source] Tested in: (trac) Translate: · |
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[[]] : "Calculus" by Benjamin Crowell edit Maintainers: Ben Crowell · License: CC-BY-SA · Mime types: .html, .pdf |
Download v. · [www.lightandmatter.com/calc/ source] Tested in: (trac) Translate: · |
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[[]] : Elementary Calculus: An Approach Using Infinitesimals by Jerome H. Keisler edit Maintainers: · License: CC-BY-NC-SA · Mime types: .pdf |
Download v. · [www.math.wisc.edu/~keisler/calc.html source] Tested in: (trac) Translate: · |
Music
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[[]] : "Eyes and Ears" by Benjamin Crowell; an anthology of music for sight-singing edit Maintainers: Ben Crowell · License: CC-BY-SA · Mime types: .pdf |
Download v. · [http://www.lightandmatter.com/sight/sight.html source] Tested in: (trac) Translate: · |
Science
- UNESCO Sourcebook for Science Teaching
- in Spanish:
Manual de la UNESCO para la enseñanza de las Ciencias - In French:
Manuel de l'UNESCO pour l'Enseignement des Sciences
All have tested OK on Read on a G1G1 machine, except the Read interface takes a lot of usable space Yamaplos 12:56, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
Physics
- http://www.motionmountain.net/
- by Benjamin Crowell:
- Electricity and Magnetism
- The Modern Revolution in Physics
- Conceptual Physics
- Optics
- Conservation Laws
- Newtonian Physics
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[[]] : "Light and Matter" by Benjamin Crowell; college-level introductory physics for life science majors edit Maintainers: Ben Crowell · License: CC-BY-SA · Mime types: .html, .pdf |
Download v. · [www.lightandmatter.com/books.html source] Tested in: (trac) Translate: · |
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[[]] : "Simple Nature" by Benjamin Crowell; introductory physics for engineering majors edit Maintainers: Ben Crowell · License: CC-BY-SA · Mime types: .html, .pdf |
Download v. · [www.lightandmatter.com/area1sn.html source] Tested in: (trac) Translate: · |
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[[]] : "Conceptual Physics" by Benjamin Crowell; introductory physics for gen ed students edit Maintainers: Ben Crowell · License: CC-BY-SA · Mime types: .html, .pdf |
Download v. · [http://www.lightandmatter.com/cp/index.html source] Tested in: (trac) Translate: · |
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[[]] : A Radically Modern Approach to Introductory Physics by David J. Raymond edit Maintainers: · License: CC-BY-SA · Mime types: .html, .pdf |
Download v. · source Tested in: (trac) Translate: · |
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[[]] : Radio Antenna Engineering by McGraw-Hill edit Maintainers: · License: BY-NC-SA · Mime types: .pdf |
Download v. · [[2] source] Tested in: (trac) Translate: · |
Psychology
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Economics & Social Science
from Kerala
jgay has some
Literature and more
- Manybooks, a tremendous improvement on raw Gutenberg texts
self-published
- TBPMD - not for children.
Baen Books Free Library
- Baen Free Library - Science Fiction and Fantasy
- Available formats HTML, Ebookwise, Mobipocket, RTF, Microsoft Reader
Searches and collections
Creative Commons & license-savvy searches:
More Collections
Also working on the LiveContent DVD process:
General texts
- http://www.textbooksfree.org/#Free_Internet_Libraries_
- http://linear.ups.edu/opentexts.html
- http://education.jimmyr.com/
- http://users.ictp.it/~stefanov/mylist.html
- http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page
- http://www.math.gatech.edu/~cain/textbooks/onlinebooks.html
- http://www.businessbookmall.com/Free%20Business%20Books.htm
- http://www.fhsst.org/
- http://homepages.nyu.edu/~jmg336/html/mathematics.html
General digital books:
- http://www.downloadfreepdf.com/
- http://www.ebooknetworking.com/
- http://www.freebookzone.com/
- http://www.learnoutloud.com/Free-Audio-Video#play15184
- http://www.marxists.org/
- http://theassayer.org/
Libraries and search sites:
Audiobooks:
- The Libravox directory (including Librivox)
South Africa
see the 16 books recently released in 6 languages
childrens books online
- eBook formats : Bob DuCharme has put epub versions of some of the Project Gutenberg Childrens Books together.
- World Public Library has made more than 1,000 eBooks freely available to the public specifically gathered for OLPC folks. Please visit to download the titles.
- Bee Careful, Marvin Children's book about a bee named Marvin released under a CC license.
- The Andy Holt Virtual Library "Docustack" is hosted by the university of Tennessee at Martin, and focuses on children's literature.
See also The OLPC literature page, with links to sites offering collections of free (Public Domain out-of-copyright) and commercial Ebooks in many languages. There are also specific book collections being developed by libraries and archives for OLPC (add your own!).
terminology
A "digital book" is a book that is stored in a computer and read on a computer screen. These are sometimes called "ebooks", but we refer to digital books simply as "books". Books are data without a reader application. (This last point is stretched somewhat by recent versions of Adobe Acrobat's PDF reader which can handle embedded Javascript applications in a PDF document and for HTML files containing Javascript). There is a place for rich documents containing their own reader code, but these blur the line between activities with lots of data and books as such.
Digital book formats
Book formats should be compressed (to conserve space) and open. In particular, they must not be encumbered by patents, and must be inclusive - they should not favor any particular vendor.
Text / ASCII / Unicode
The most basic format, can be compressed with simple/standard compression programs if needed. Original and default format for the Project Gutenberg e-texts.
DejaVU
The DJVU format was developed in order to provide a much higher level of compression for scanned paper books, than existing formats like JPEG and TIFF can provide.
The PDF format is a simplified form of the Postscript programming language that only includes the commands necessary to paint ink on the page. It is easy for end users to create PDFs with the Print function of a word processing or drawing application. There are extensive Free/Open Source libraries of functions for creating, editing, and otherwise modifying PDFS, and applications built from them. For example, libpoppler and the Poppler PDF Utilities. There are also several Free PDF display programs, including xpdf, kpdf, evince, gv, and ViewPDF.
HTML
Although not particularly designed as a book format, HTML is widely used for books. Most newer Project Gutenberg books are available as HTML. Both special purpose Ebook readers and web browsers can be used to access HTML Ebooks. The OLPC does include a web browser.
XML
XML is not a directly usable format, but rather a meta-format. XML alone is not a book format, but many modern formats that can be used for books are XML based, such as ODF, and the XHTML variant of HTML. Other XML based formats are DocBook, popular for computer manuals, or TEI, used in the Humanities. Modern web browsers can render XML directly, but to make such a display attractive some transform (expressed in CSS or XSLT) may be required.
OpenDocument
OpenDocument is a compressed format (zip-compressed XML) for documents, including books, presentations, and spreadsheets. Complex documents (with many images) can be sent as a single document (unlike HTML), yet it can flow in a display (unlike PDF). It is also editable. AbiWord runs on the OLPC and is capable of opening ODF files.
Greenstone
Greenstone is a monolithic format for document collections. A Greenstone library allows quick full-text search access to large collections, and is typically smaller than the full-text it contains, due to the compression scheme it uses. A Greenstone library can be both accessed via a web server or locally on a (read-only) disk. A complete Greenstone collection can be large, which makes it less useful, given the storage constraints of the OLPC.
FictionBook
"FictionBook is an XML format for storage of books where each element of the book is described by tags." Also known as fb2, it is supported by FBReader. In fact, the FBReader website lists other book formats that are not listed here.
DVI / TeX
DeVice Independent format. Output of a typesetting system called TeX that is very widely used in academic and open source technical literature. See wikipedia for more information.
Book Readers
On the XO
Browse
The Browse activity renders HTML, XHTML, and most image formats.
The users's home page in Browse is the "OLPC Library", which presents a navigation bar of available Collections on the XO.
Evince
The Read activity uses the Evince library to render, and has a modified UI targeted to kids. Evince supports various image file formats including DJVU, PDF, [TIFF], and DVI with appropriate library support. Read in release 8.2.0 supports primarily PDF. See choosing image formats.
Other book readers
Plucker
A popular book format for PalmOS devices. A reader for Linux/X11/GTK+ already exists in the plkr.org CVS codebase (and is distributed in the Plucker 1.8 source tarfile). It should run on OLPC machine's OS. Most Project Gutenberg books are already available in Plucker format at the URL
http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/plucker/NUMBER/NUMBER
where NUMBER is the PG book number for that book. For instance, John Stuart Mill's autobiography is available from PG in Plucker format as http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/plucker/10378/10378.
FBReader
An open source Ebook reader supporting many formats (fb2, html, chm, plucker, Palmdoc, mobipocket, etc.). more about FBReader
OpenBerg
OpenBerg Reader is a multiformat book reader based on Mozilla technologies. It's far from complete but it can already display rich XML/HTML books and organize libraries. Livesearch is in the works, as well as Plucker compatibility. The project could use help.
OpenDocument Viewer
The ODF Fellowship's OpenDocument Viewer could be used as a reader for OpenDocument files. It is open source.
OLPC Features
There are some pages already discussing how book formats and book readers could be specially adapted to the OLPC: