A book for the small budget
The first of a planned series of free online books at www.yourwildlife.org has just been posted, Dr. Eleanor’s Book of Common Ants, available as a PDF or an iBook, www.yourwildlife.org/ibook-of-common-ants. Rob Dunn, a biologist at North Carolina State University and a Natural History contributing editor, is one of the two project managers for Your Wild Life. According to Dunn, “This first book used data collected by participants in our School of Ants project (www.schoolofants.org).” The oldest and largest collection of free eBooks, or online books, is www.gutenberg.org. It was started in 1971 by Michael S. Hart, an “ardent technologist and futurist,” who died in 2011. Supported by donations, volunteers maintain the collection, which boasts almost 43,000 titles. Most are in the public domain and are more interesting from a historical prospective than as a source for current discoveries in science. There is a science category with subcategories by various disciplines at www.gutenberg.org/wik/Category:Science_Bookshelf.
The site has links to partners and affiliates that also offer free or low-cost books and articles. The main distribution site for Gutenberg eBooks is www.ibiblio.org, a collaboration between the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and the Center for the Public Domain. You may find it easier to search ibiblio than Gutenberg for titles and categories that are listed on both sites. At least, its search engine seemed quick to come up with a home recipe for moonshine.