Don’t have the time to go and buy the original text of Shakespeare’s Othello for the school project? Or would you rather spend that money on something else? Fret not for now you can get that and millions of other books ‘free of cost’ in the ‘land of unlimited possibilities’ – a.k.a the internet.

E-books or electronic books are nothing new; in fact they’ve been on the scene for quite a while now. The Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-books , describes e-books as ‘electronic equivalents of the conventional books’. It explains in length the various types and forms a typical e-book can take; image files, rich text format, hyper text mark-up language, CHM format etc. To put it simply, it’s text on screen.

Imagine a school where students carry just an e-books reader like the one by Sony shown here; http://www.learningcenter.sony.us/assets/itpd/reader/ . Instead of carrying truckloads of books on their backs, thousands of books can be fit in a hand-held device. Similarly, educationists also see the role of the traditional libraries changing with this new medium. Instead of hundreds and thousands of books covering floor after floor, why not store them all digitally and save up on money and a lot of hassle?

Project Gutenberg is one such online collection of thousands of books available free of cost. It was founded by Michael Hart as early as 1971! Since then, they have been working on providing as many books online as possible to facilitate reading and learning. You can easily access their collection on their website http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page.

Yes you can download and do whatever you want to with these books – read, print, distribute as far as it is not for commercial purposes. But why are these books free of cost? This is simply because the copyright for these books has expired in the United States (but it might not have in other countries, as the website points out).

You can search for books either by language, type, author, or recently added. They also have an RSS feed of the latest additions which is updated on nightly basis. If yet you are undecided you can view their top 100 book list. You can also alternatively use Yahoo! or Google’s search engines to search for books in the Gutenberg Library. Just keep one thing in mind, as the site clearly mentions that the books available are those with expired copyrights, don’t expect the latest Grisham or Steele novels in the library.

While Project Gutenberg certainly has an impressive collection, http://crankylibrarian.com/  is also a very interesting ‘online library’ to read books. It currently stocks more than 2500 books and 700 authors along with more than thousand art works. You can either get a complete list of available authors and titles, or search by title, category or even by chapters. This, of course, will be very slow but it’s an option nonetheless. Other than that, they have a list of books recommended by their head librarian which is also pretty good.

If you find the original orange and blue layout of the website an eyesore for reading books, you can customize the look of the page to your liking. Change the background, font colour, size and type and create your own reading environment. And don’t forget to keep your voices low, the cranky librarian is watching over!

Another excellent resource for e-books is the http://www.worldwideschool.org/ . Like the Project Gutenberg, the World Wide School is an online portal dedicated to providing ‘learning resources’ free of cost. Searching for books here couldn’t have been easier with their simple and straight-forward layout. And what’s more, they even have a complete page on searching tips. You can search for titles and authors, and you can also search for phrases and words.

The website has a complete list of authors and titles and they have categorized books into various broad categories like philosophy, social sciences, youth, etc. So if you are looking for something like Anne of Green Gables or even the works of Samuel Johnson, you can be sure to find them all here.

The best however, is the meta index http://www.digitalbookindex.org/.  What could be better than having one big index of all the scattered e-books websites on the web? You can see a long list of indexed pages ranging from hundreds of university presses to popular commercial names like Random House and Bantam books. The website boasts a whopping 130, 000 title records. From encyclopaedias, thesauri, dictionaries to academic volumes like those of medicine, economics, psychology etc, all can be searched and read in an easy search-and-go procedure.

Almost all of these major e-book resources only provide links to books whose copyright is no more valid and hence they aren’t violating any copyright laws. But hundreds of other websites are. You can get the popular Stephen King or Dan Brown books on one of these sites and if you are lucky enough you can even get your hands on the just-released Harry Potter books. Like the MP3 industry, the e-book industry has also become a cause of concern for the copyright law enforcers.

One such illegal website even had the President’s newly released In the Line of Fire up for downloading! Similarly, other latest works by famous authors come out in the form of e-books right after or even before the actual launch of the hard copy.

Copyright issues apart, would book lovers really switch over to the electronic medium to pursue their hobby? What about curling up on the sofa with a cup of coffee and your favourite book on a Saturday night or a lazy Sunday? And that smell of new books and the yellowing pages of your grandparents’ cherished collections? Oh, and what about discovering dried up flowers and bits of paper in an old book?

For now, your are armed with a list of websites to help you in finding just the right book to read on your desktops, laptops, PDAs and cell phones while at work, travel or holiday. Happy reading!