Major parts of the site include:
The site is hosted by the University of Pennsylvania Libraries, who provide the server, disk space, and network bandwidth for the site. They also employ the editor, and support him in his various digital library activities (of which this is but one).
The online books listed on this page have been authored, placed online, and hosted, by a wide variety of individuals and groups throughout the world (and throughout history!).
The index of individual titles includes books and definitive collections that meet these criteria, and major serial archives that meet these criteria. The index has two parts: a "curated collection" of books that we've personally reviewed and cataloged. and "extended shelves" of books where cataloging data has been automatically imported and adapted from outside organizations. Books in the curated collection are given preference in many search and browse results, and they also have information pages on this site with stable URLs.
In practice, most of what gets included in our curated collection comes directly or indirectly from reader suggestions, either from the extended shelves, or from elsewhere online.
The Online Books Page is developed in collaboration with many people and projects. Here are some that haven't yet been mentioned.
The books on the extended shelves come primarily from HathiTrust, Project Gutenberg, and the University of Floria Baldwin Digital Collection of Historic Children's Literature who supply the cataloging information we use in those listings.
The editor has also worked with The Universal Library Project at Carnegie Mellon. They supplied many of the copyright renewal scans that can be used to check the public domain status of a work.
The database has also been developed in collaboration with A Celebration of Women Writers, a sister site to this one that is edited by Mary Mark Ockerbloom.
We also have received updates and corrections from countless readers over the Internet, and appreciate them very much!
The books themselves are mostly prepared by a variety of projects and individuals. Some of the major suppliers of online books are listed on the archives page. Here's how people can prepare books to go online.
If you'd like to get involved, there are lots of ways to do so, and volunteers and associates are always welcome. You may be interested in
At this time, there is no budget for The Online Books Page as such. The time to maintain the site is donated by the editor (with the blessing of his employer), and the overhead for keeping the server going is paid for by the Penn Libraries. We do not solicit donations for this site at this time. If you would like to support the programs of the Penn Libraries, our hosts, you can find donation information at the Penn Libraries' giving site. Those who would like to fund the production of online books may want to look at this page.
We may tabulate aggregate user statistics from our logs to better understand usage of our site, and report on its usage to third parties (but only in ways that do not allow specific users to be identified). We may also, in the future, if a user so requests, use that individual's access data to provide customized views of the site, but we do not do so now.
Some feedback forms this site provides give the option for users to provide their names or contact information. Providing such information is completely optional (though may be necessary if a user wants a reply). When we archive feedback submissions, we strip out the names and contact information provided in those form fields.
We do not give out information about specific accesses or users to third parties, unless required by law to do so. (To date, we never have been so required, to the best of the editor's knowledge.) The editor believes that access data collected at this site would be legally protected by the same patron protections as other library access data, but hasn't checked with a lawyer, or with the Libraries, about this. In any case, he intends to raise any appropriate legal challenges to any attempt to subpoena individual access information. (Readers should be aware that the "USA Patriot Act" may limit our ability to resist such requests, or inform people that such requests have been made. For more about the Patriot Act and libraries, see the American Library Association's information on this subject.)
Cookies are not required to access this site. The editor makes his best effort to tell people when cookies are required to access books hosted elsewhere that are listed by this site (so that users can keep cookies turned off if they wish).
The sites that hold the books we link to generally have different privacy policies not under our control.
The Online Books Page, its sub-pages, and its compilation of listings are copyright by John Mark Ockerbloom. Details of our copyrights and licenses are given on this page.
Links to any point in these pages are welcome, and ordinary links do not require permission. However, if you want to redistribute or 'mirror' substantial portions of these listings or pages, or create derivative works or displays based on them (beyond what is clearly allowed by fair use or the inherent public domain status of facts by themselves), you must abide by licenses associated with them, or where no license is given, obtain prior written permission. Write to the editor at the address below to pursue permissions.
The editor of this page intends to respect any copyrights of the authors of the books listed by the site. We will not knowingly list a book that is neither online with the copyright holder's permission, nor in the public domain (or otherwise legally available) in the country where the online book is stored. We also attempt to warn people about books that are legal to access in a server's hosting country, but may be illegal to access from the US (where this site is located).
Information on new listings can be automatically retrieved via an RSS feed, updated once a day on most business days. (If you want to see this information as an ordinary web page, see our new books listings page.)
We are also currently making Dublin Core versions of metadata for all our curated listings available via the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting. Harvesters can use the base URI https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/OAI-onlinebooks to harvest them. (Note that this is not an address designed for web browsers to visit; the content will only make sense to a harvesting client.) This service may be subject to access limitations or discontinuation if it loads the server too much. Our curated collection metadata has a CC0 dedication associated with it. Data for the extended-shelves listings can be obtained directly from their providers (and may be subject to their license or restrictions). For example, HathiTrust's OAI-PMH feed, used to create records for their titles in our extended shelves, is described here, and Project Gutenberg's metadata, also used in our extended shelves, can be downloaded from their site.
We also have raw data for our curated collection listings, as well as serial copyright information files, at our Github instance. We don't currently provide support for it, but you're welcome to use it if you find it handy.
Home -- About Us -- FAQ -- Get Involved! -- In Progress / Requested -- More Book Links
Books -- News -- Features -- Archives -- The Inside Story
Edited
by John Mark Ockerbloom (onlinebooks@pobox.upenn.edu)
OBP copyrights and licenses