Telephone Directories

Primary Sources

 eBooks and Audiobooks

Reading Groups

Obits / Genealogy

How-To

Internet Utilities

Laws & Legal Resources

Telephone Directories

Argali - Combining the results from about 20 online telephone books, Argali is a robust downloadable program that limits searches to 10/month.

pipl - A nextgen people search that compiles personal data from social networking sites, blogs, public records, professional websites, etc.

Zabasearch - Allows searches for people, businesses, area codes and IP addresses, and perform reverse look-ups.

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Primary Sources

Chronicling America - Library of Congress
Searches and displays newspaper pages from 1880-1922 and provides information about American newspapers published between 1690-present.

A Chronology of US Historical Documents - University of Oklahoma
Displays a chronological display of significant documents in United States history, with an emphasis on Presidential inaugural addresses.

Digitized Primary American History Sources - University of Northern Iowa
Compiles a list of primary sources from American history that have been digitized and made available online by a wide range of institutions.

Documenting the American South - University of North Carolina
A digital publishing initiative that provides Internet access to texts, images, and audio files related to southern history, literature, and culture.

From Revolution to Reconstruction - University of Groningen
A chronological display of American documents, the website also provides Presidential State of the Union speeches.

History Central - American Public University
With over 500 American Historical primary sources, this website specializes in American history, timelines, and wars, the History Central also provides the economy, population, and historical summary of every country. 

The Internet Modern History Sourcebook - Fordham
Features an exhaustive compilation of World history primary sources, arranged chronologically, that are pulled from a variety of websites.

Primary Documents in American History - Library of Congress
Links to materials digitized by the Library of Congress, with a narrative explaining the document's importance and place in history.

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eBooks

Baen Books
About 120 titles from this science fiction and fantasy publisher are available for free digitally in many formats.  Instructions for downloading to iPads, Nooks and Kindles are provided.

Book Lending
This website connects lenders and borrowers of Kindle eBooks.  After registering, you can lend or borrow a book between Kindles a single time, for a period of 14 days.  eBook Fling is a similar service which allows lending of Kindle and Nook titles between owners.

Digital Book Index
Intended as a comprehensive index to most major eBook sites as well as thousands of smaller specialized sites, this site provides links to more than 165,000 full-text digital books. More than 140,000 of these books, texts and documents are available free.  

Feedbooks
A site that distributes thousands of eBooks in EPUB, Kindle and PDF formats, Feedbooks offers titles for free or to purchase.  No signup is required for the free public domain or original eBooks.  The site is very easy to browse by category, author or what's popular.

Free-eBooks.net
Registering on this site will give you unlimited access to eBooks in HTML format (to read online in your browser) and to five eBooks every month in PDF or TXT formats.  

Google Books
It's anybody's guess as to what Google Books will be in the future--it's already changed drastically from the original concept of as many books available free or in limited view since the Writer's Guild class-action lawsuit.  At the moment, however, Google Books remains a useful way to find freely available books and magazines, whether in portions or in whole.

The Internet Archive
This site doesn't limit itself to just eBooks and digitized texts (of which it has over 2 million)--it also provides a moving images archive, audio archive (the full Grateful Dead archive is here!) and acts as the archive of the Internet with the Wayback Machine.  Many thanks Brewster Kahle for his work with this project, he's a true hero to librarians!

Project Gutenberg
One of the original book digitization projects, Project Gutenberg makes over 32,000 texts available for download and provides a useful guide for how to transfer the texts to your eBook reader.

U Penn's Online Books Page
Indexing over 35,000 English works in various formats (so that means you may be able to use the texts on your iPad, iPhone, Nook, or other digital reading device), the U Penn Online Books Page is the largest indexing website for eBooks on the Internet.

UWM Bookstore
A service of the university bookstore to help students reduce the cost of purchasing required texts, this is a directory of eBook websites.  A helpful feature is that each website's eBook formats are listed, making it easy to decide which site to visit based on what eBook reader you own.

Audiobooks

Books Should Be Free
On this site of free public domain audiobooks no signup is needed to download MP3, iPod and iTunes formats.  Download titles to your computer and then sync them with your MP3 player via software like iTunes.  If you don't have an MP3 player you can stream books from the site and listen to them online.

LibriVox
The goal of LibriVox is to make all public domain books available as free audio books.  Download MP3, Ogg Vorbis or podcast files to your computer; step-by-step directions will guide you from there.

Project Gutenberg
Browse free public domain audiobooks by author, title or language.  Downloads available in Ogg Vorbis, MP3 and iTunes formats.

The Internet Archive
Listen to free audiobooks and poetry recordings.  Features digital recordings and MP3's from the Naropa Poetics Audio Archive, LibriVox, Project Gutenberg, Maria Lectrix and Internet Archive users.

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 Reading Groups

Goodreads
A social book review and suggestion site, Goodreads allows you to keep track of titles you've read, are currently reading, or want to read, via a "shelf" system.  It's a great system for tracking your books, especially if you aren't terribly comfortable with computers.

LibraryThing
Aspire to be a librarian?  LibraryThing lets you be live the dream by classifying your books through a tag system, tracking titles you own or are reading, and building your own catalog.  Beyond that, it's also a fantastic site for getting user-provided reviews, suggestions, and other great information.

Oprah's Book Club
Just because her show has ended doesn't mean the website won't keep providing quality reading suggestions and guides for book groups.

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 Obits/Genealogy

Boston Globe Obituaries
In partnership with legacy.com, the Boston Globe provides national and local obituaries.  A limited portion of the archives are free, but the rest are on a pay-per-view basis.

National Archives at Boston
Serving the New England region, the National Archives provides a center for local, regional and national historical research through access to its archive of government documents.

New England Historic Genealogical Society
Founded in 1845, this society is the oldest, and one of the most respected, nonprofit genealogical organizations in the country.  You can obtain access to over 200,000 books, periodicals and microform materials--in addition to nearly every published New England genealogy and history--by paying for a membership or single-day use.

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How-To

All of the following sites have thousands of Do-it-yourself videos organized into such categories as Home, Electronics, Sports, and Hobbies, and all are keyword-searchable.

www.5min.com

www.about.com

www.howcast.com

www.howstuffworks.com

www.instructables.com

www.lifehacker.com

www.videojug.com

www.wonderhowto.com

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Internet Utilities

Easybib
A great tool for students and researchers, Easybib creates citations for a bibliography or footnotes by plugging in a web site, book, newspaper, or other source.

Gimp
Looking for a free alternative to the features-laden (and expensive) Photoshop?  Check out Gimp, the free software download that allows you to retouch photos, compose images, and more.

KompoZer
A free software download that uses a "what you see is what you get" (WYSIWYG) interface for easy website creation and authoring.

Fotoflexer
An easy, internet-based photo editing site that you upload photos to and edit using their easy-to-understand interface.

Readability
Ever try to print from a website and have it full of unsightly ads, menus, and nonsense pictures?  Readability--a Firefox browser plugin--strips all of that from a website and formats the text for easy printing and readability.

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 Laws & Legal Assistance

Massachusetts General Laws
Here you'll find an online version of the Massachusetts General Laws, searchable by keyword, chapter and section.

NOLO Law Books
Need to get out of that speeding ticket you got for trucking down 128?  Found yourself in small claims court?  Then you'll want to check out the ever-helpful NOLO guides, of which 11 are free and online here!

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