Literature
Please add links for other literature collections you know about.
Multilingual
- Languages with more than 50 books: Chinese Dutch English Finnish French German Italian Portuguese Spanish Tagalog
- Languages with up to 50 books: Afrikaans Aleut Bulgarian Catalan Czech Danish Esperanto Friulano Gamilaraay Gascon Greek Hebrew Hungarian Icelandic Iloko Interlingua Irish Iroquoian Japanese Khasi Korean Latin Lithuanian Mayan Languages Middle English Nahuatl Napoletano-Calabrese North American Indian Norwegian Old English Polish Romanian Russian Sanskrit Serbian Slovak Swedish Welsh Yiddish
- Note that Project Gutenberg only verifies the copyright status of the books it distributes in the U.S., and many books in its collection may be still restricted by copyrights in other countries.
- Google Books Beta Project description Search books in copyright, download books out of copyright; will eventually include all languages in libraries digitized. I found works in Old French. modern German and Classical Greek in a quick search.
- Wikibooks English, Deutsch, Français, Español, Português, Polski, Italiano, Nederlands, Magyar, עברית
- (Note: do not mistake the commercial wikibook.org for this Wikipedia site.)
- Wikimedia Commons 903,307 media files in Oct. 2006
Alemannisch | Aragonés | العربية (Arabic) | Asturianu | Català | Česky | Cymraeg (Welsh) | Deutsch | Ελληνικά (Greek) | English | Español | Français | Gaeilge | Galego | Bahasa Indonesia | Italiano | 日本語 (Japanese) | 한국어 (Korean) | עברית (Hebrew) | Latine | Lëtzebuergesch | Lietuvių | Magyar (Hungarian) | Bahasa Melayu | Plattdüütsch | Nederlands | Norsk (nynorsk) | Norsk (bokmål) | Polski | Português | Русский (Russian) | Slovenčina (Slovak) | Slovenščina (Slovenian) | Sunda | Suomi (Finnish) | Svenska | ภาษาไทย (Thai) | 简体中文 (Simplified Chinese) | 繁體中文 (Traditional Chinese) | 廣東話
Беларуская (Belarusian| Brezhoneg | Български (Bulgarian) | Dansk | Eald Englisc | Eesti | Esperanto | Euskara | فارسی (Farsi) | Føroyskt | ગુજરાતી | हिन्दी | Hrvatski | Interlingua | Íslenska | Қазақша (Kazakh) | ಕನ್ನಡ (Kannada) | Kapampangan | Молдовеняскэ (Moldovan) | Nedersaksisch (NL) | Română | Seeltersk | Shqip (Albanian) | Српскоhrvatski (Serbo-Croatian) | Српски (Serbian)| தமிழ் (Tamil) | Українська (Ukrainian) | Tiếng Việt | Türkçe
- Qur'an in 23 languages
- Stanford OperaGlass Italian, French, Russian, German, English, others
- The Lied and Art Song Texts Page Italian, French, Russian, German, English, others
- Thesaurus Literaturae Buddhicae Sanskrit, Chinese, Tibetan, English
- Complete or partial Bibles have been published in nearly 2000 languages by organizations such as The Bible Society of the UK; Wycliffe Bible Translators; The Christian Science Publishing Society. There is no central site where they can be accessed, but they are rather easy to Google. "Bible swahili" will get you links to several New Testaments and a whole Bible on the first page.
English, (mainly)
Chinese
CBETA 中華電子佛典協會 Chinese Buddhist Electronic Text Association, in Chinese
French
- WikiBooks (Wikilivres) and WikiSource
- Ebooks libres et gratuits
German
- Projekt Gutenberg DE Yes, the German version of Project Gutenberg
- Bach Cantata texts and translations
Classical Greek
Pali
- Chaṭṭha Saṅgāyana Tipiṭaka - Unicode Version Romanized
- Tipiṭaka and Pāḷi Texts Devanagari, Burmese, Romanized; CD-ROM
- Digital Pali Reader GPL software; Romanized
Portuguese
A "digital library" based on open-source software and run by the University of Sao Paulo (USP). Allows you to search registered works by author, title, keyword, and language, and supposedly category as well, although as of 1/22 that feature was not functional (so it's unclear how much child-centered content is available). According to the official statistics, the site currently has over 30000 registered works. Downloads are in PDF format and can be freely redistributed, but not altered.
This page seems to be aimed more at university students. Has articles and books on a number of topics, and content may be used for non-commercial purposes as long as the source and author are cited. Works are downloadable in PDF. Includes a number of works that are often required reading for the vestibulares (university entrance exams).
Modest selection of works in Portuguese available for download in PDF format. According to the site there are over 500 books available, including works by Shakespeare, Voltaire, Cicero, and Aristotle. While most of the titles are in the public domain, some (such as Orwell's Animal Farm) are not, and it is unclear under what terms (if any) they are licensed.
USP (University of Sao Paulo) virtual library. Has a respectable collection of material -- texts (sorted by literature, biography, instructional material, periodicals, and academic theses), and a wide range of audio (including audiobooks), images, and video. Written works appear on the webpage rather than as downloadable PDF files. The licensing terms seem to vary throughout the site: in many instances they are not specified, although in some cases it is noted specifically that the Copyright Law (9.610) applies and that the authors must be contacted before certain uses can be made of a work (contact information is given).
Author's site. Is there open/free content here?
Has 19 stories available to read and one audio cd's worth of stories for listening (license terms are unspecified). Full-text versions of Ruth Rocha books are not available on the website -- the "books" function goes only to a list of published books that can be searched by title or publisher.
The section of the Brazilian Insitute of Geography and Statistics website that is aimed, as the title would suggest, at children ages 7-12. Includes things like basic educational materials and maps that can be downloaded, printed, and saved (although licensing terms are not made explicit).
- Museu do Índio
- Biblioteca UOL
- Virtual Books Online
- Historinhas para Crianças
- Planetário
- IG Educação
- Fontes para Educação Infantil
Tibetan
Yiddish
"When the Center began, scholars estimated there were 70,000 Yiddish books still extant and recoverable. The Center recovered that number in six months and has gone on to recover 1.5 million volumes, with hundreds of additional books continuing to arrive each week. The Center’s achievement has been hailed as the 'the greatest cultural rescue effort in Jewish history.'"