Special Announcement for Book Lovers

Have you ever heard of the WorldeBook Fair? This summer marks the second annual one. From July 4th through August 4th the World Public Library allows free downloads for approximately 620,000 eBook files and 110,000 commercial ones, for a near-total count of 750,000 selections.

Michael S. Hart, cofounder of the fair, states that “The World eBook Fair is a showcase for the range and importance of eBooks for enjoyment, education, research and literacy.” If anyone doubted the possibilities of eBooks in the past, this vast and growing collection alone stands as one reason to delve deeper into the current trends and future possibilities.

What kinds of eBooks line this public library’s virtual shelves? Any type you can imagine that belong in the public domain. The library holds 125 collections that include Classic Literature, Children’s Classics, Science Fiction, Audio Mp3s, Technical eBooks, and Government Printing Office Collections, to name a small sampling. We can find the works of Jane Austen, Lewis Carroll, Charles Dickens, and thousands more authors’ works.

At my first free moment, I logged onto the library site and found a classic my inner child still loves--L. Frank Baum’s, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Within a few minutes, I opened the eBook and started to read. I needed only my web browser and a Portable Document Format (PDF) viewer, Adobe Acrobat. The book rests inside my hard drive, and so began my virtual bookshelf.

If you’d like to sample eBooks for free, check it out the Second Annual World eBook Fair.