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[AuntiMame]

well, maybe repository is to grand a word.

But I've made a couple of ebook PDFs and you can download them here:

http://www.r-mw.com/XO/peter_rabbit.pdf
http://www.r-mw.com/XO/childs_garden_of_verses.pdf
http://www.r-mw.com/XO/a_christmas_carol.pdf

I'll modify this posting as I add new titles. If anyone has PDFs they want to send me I'll add them to the library and list them for download.

Here's the list of sources so far (5:45PM EST 1/7/08)

• the three listed above
• http://www.manybooks.net/ has Project Gutenberg (hereafter PG) text in a wide variety of formats
• http://books.google.com/ public domain books
• http://immunitysec.com/resources-dkm.shtml works by Daniel Keyes Moran
• http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page PG. the Granddaddy of public domain books. all available in "plain vanilla ASCII", some in HTML. You have to convert to PDF for the XO reader.
• http://www.baen.com/library/ A sci-fi publisher pust some of their copyrighted works online here for free download.
• http://search.overdrive.com/ a service that lets you "check out" a PDF book and it expires in a couple of weeks. Very recent content here...
• http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/  University of PA online respository
• http://www.magickeys.com/books/index.html kids stories inHTML. You'll need to convert to PDF for the XO
• http://www.starfall.com/ has some downloadable "learning to read" PDFs
• http://www.archive.org/index.php has links to many ebook sites
• http://scalzi.com/whatever/?page_id=94 works from sci-fi writer John Scalzi
• http://craphound.com/ Corey Doctorow's works
• http://www.planetpdf.com/free_pdf_ebooks.asp?CurrentPage=1 some very nicely formatted public domain books
• http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/ collection of ebooks for adults from University of Aelaide, Australia.
• http://www.childrensbooksforever.com/
• http://www.childrensbooksforever.com/
• feedbooks.com.  Project Gutenberg texts that are reformatted. You can choose a cusomt size for your pdf (112mm x 155m). 
• http://www2.hn.psu.edu/faculty/jmanis/jimspdf.htm  Penn State Electronic Classics
• http://www.wowio.com/users/CategoryPage.asp a commercial site that offers free ebook downloads. ebooks are ad supported (you will receive and ad along with the book) Appears to be a consortium of small presses.

Aunti

[Irish_Moss]

I found a good resource here for some books in html format:  http://www.magickeys.com/books/index.html

I sent them an email explaining the laptop.org program, and asked if they could be used as a resource.
Hopefully they will be interested, and we can convert the books there into downloadable pdf's.

[cmonkey]

Nifty.  I like it.  Hopefully the next version of Read supports more file formats though.

[KenS]

AuntieMame:  Thanks alot - These are great!  And I have to mention that Auntie Mame is a great screen name (and a fine movie).

I haven't got my XO yet (supposed to arrive today), but I've downloaded the HTML files for a number of picture book titles from Google Books / PG for pre-loading on it before X_mas morning (the XO is a gift for my 5 year old).  I didn't realize until just recently that READ only handles pdf file - I guess I figured we can read the HTML ebooks in the browser....  Anyways, the books I've got so far include:

A Child Garden of Verses (Illustrated!)
Tale of Peter Rabbit
Lear's Nonsense Drolleries (has the Owl & The Pussycat)
The Little Mother Goose
Favorite Fairy Tales
Illustrated Alphabet of Birds
Twas the Night Before Christmas

I forget which is was - PG or Google-books - but one of 'em has a index of 'picture books' (the link was posted somerwere here too, I think on the other ebooks thread) that enables you to avoid sifting thru too much stuff that's not relevant (if you're looking for picture books, as I am)....

It does look like magickeys.com might have some interesting titles (I quickly scanned it) - but the pop-up window it flashed me makes me wonder how receptive they'll be to pdf'ing their content....

Another potential resource:  I'm planning on going thru some of the pdfs in the "download center" of http://www.starfall.com (which is a site my daughter LOVES) and find out what's applicable for the XO - but most of their downloads are for printing.  But it still a great site - one I hope will work with the XO browser....

 

[AuntiMame]

And I have to mention that Auntie Mame is a great screen name (and a fine movie).

KenS,
All women want to be Rosalind Russell (or at least they should want to be her) 

Aunti

[mbelvadi]

I highly recommend the Internet Archive, http://www.archive.org
It includes the free fulltext of tens of thousands of public domain digitized books, from several major nonprofit projects, like Project Gutenberg and the newer Universal Library. If you read any Indian (South Asian) languages, you should check out the Million Books project which is a subcollection of the UL.

[PixelFish]

May I recommend the Baen Free Library? Baen puts up books by their authors in HTML, RTF and other formats. This is a legitimate site, run by Baen, a science ficiton publisher. http://www.baen.com/library/

Also, John Scalzi has the entirety of his first novel, Agent to the Stars, up right here at his Creative Sampler: http://scalzi.com/whatever/?page_id=94  (he also has Sagan's Diary available in audio form, read by prominent women in the SF community)

And science fiction writer, Cory Doctorow, is teh Famous for letting you download his books for free: http://craphound.com/

[karindalziel]

Here's some nicely formatted Ebooks-

http://www.planetpdf.com/free_pdf_ebooks.asp?CurrentPage=1

mostly older kid stuff (charles dickens, etc) but there's alice in wonderland, aesop's fables and the like.

-Karin

[torgesen]

Thanks AuntiMame.  I downloaded the Peter Rabbit PDF and it works great. 

I read in an earlier post that if you're viewing pages in vertical mode then using the page down button to move from page to page offsets the subsequent pages so that eventually the page break is in the middle of the screen.  I found this to be true also, but I started playing around with the zoom percentage to see if I could find the right zoom percentage to eliminate the problem.  Unfortunately, it looks like the correct zoom would be 121.5% (which you can't get).  However, at 122% you can get through the whole book without messing up the offset so much that part of a page isn't visible. This wouldn't work for a very long book, but for shorter books it works well.  I'll see if I can figure out the best zoom setting for some of the other books.

[KenS]

The READ activity kept crashing for me - I'd see "LOADING" and sometimes a title page, but then it would quit.

Has anyone else see this?

Unfortunately, I can only work on the machine at night now, after my Daughter has fallen asleep.  But I'll try coming here and loading some of the PDFs AuntiMame has posted.  But so far - I'm having this problem with Lear's Nonsense Drolleries" that I downloaded from archive.org.

[brooksc]

I'm just starting to explore the ebook options, but I found this great site which offers free children books in PDF format.

http://www.childrensbooksforever.com/

[vkoser]

KenS: I have varying luck with Read.  Sometimes the peter rabbit book opens first try.  Other times it hangs on Loading...  Other times the Read activity just loads and no document displays at all.

[Tortuga]

Repository is a good word Here's a link to a site that lists a large number of sources:

http://www.e-book.com.au/freebooks.htm#audio
                                        Best free Digital Libraries - Australia

                             New     Best free Digital Libraries - New Zealand

                                        Best free Digital Libraries - World

                                          Other Free Australian Books

                                          Other Free Book Sites/Pages in English

                                          World - Other Languages, Regional and National

                                          Individual Topics/Miscellaneous

                                          Sacred Texts & Religion

                            New       Free Audio Books

[GeoLeoX]

Penn State has a great collection in an easy-to-browse context.

[rjnagle]

See also Wowio's children books . Free recent PDFs in English and Spanish.

Important: you have to register to download them, and registration is limited only to US residents. Also, there are one or two advertisements per book. Typical ebooks for children are 5-10 MB.

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