Yen Wong, Learning Programs Officer at the State Library, continues her search for the best free library resources. In this post Yen looks at the Open Library project.

Open Library is a project of the non-profit Internet Archive – the folks responsible for the Wayback machine. Open Library is a massive catalogue with an ambition to catalogue every published book. The project is relying on libraries and individuals from around the world to contribute to its catalogue by adding books, fixing mistakes or writing descriptions of a book. Over one thousand libraries have contributed to the project to date.

Where possible, links to free ebooks have been listed, but Open Library account holders can also borrow from a smaller collection of books made available by Internet Archive and its partner libraries. Registering for an account is easy – just fill out the form with your name and email and you’re set to go.

Up to five books can be borrowed for two weeks at a time.

Open Library is a wonderful resource, and I’m excited that it’s got an extensive collection such as the ancient Chinese text ‘The secret of the golden flower‘ translated by Richard Wilhelm.

Thanks to Yen for sharing this useful resource with us. You can look forward to more posts from Yen in the future, as she explores library resources, research skills and information literacy.