The Best Free Online Research Libraries

Free online research libraries are sites that allow a user to carry out research on topics and download information from them without paying a fee. They are extremely useful because they allow a user to gain access to information from a lot of sources around the world from one location. They make obtaining information about a diverse range of topics very easy and are absolutely free to use. The following can be considered the best sites for such free online research:

Highwire Press

Highwire Press is a division of the Stanford University Libraries. It claims that it hosts the largest collection of research content with more than 1000 journals and over 6 million full text articles. About 2 million of its articles are free to use. It is a valuable resource for research in medical and veterinary fields as almost all of its free 2 million articles are health-related. It is found at http://highwire.stanford.edu.

The Free Library

The Free Library offers millions of free full text articles and periodicals dating from 1984. It offers content covering Law, Government, Business, Politics, Health, Science and Technology, Entertainment, etc. It also offers free versions of classic literary works from many leading authors including biographies. It is found at http://www.thefreelibrary.com.

Encyclopedia.com

Encyclopedia.com is a free-to-use online encyclopedia that contains millions of articles from the world’s most authoritative encyclopedias and dictionaries. Researchers can access articles, facts and images on a wide range of subjects. Results are produced from 49 encyclopedias such as the Columbia Encyclopedia and Oxford’s World Encyclopedia; and from 73 dictionaries and thesauruses such as the Webster’s New World Dictionary. It also provides current and archived information from more than 3000 published works and 60 million web articles. It is found at http://www.encyclopedia.com.

Wikipedia and Wikibooks

Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia written by contributors from around the world. Wikibooks offers free open-content textbooks. These include annotated texts, manuals and instructional guides. These articles and books cover a wide range of subjects from religion through biographies to technology. On Wikipedia and Wikibooks, anyone is allowed to edit entries and books, thereby adding detailed and current information to already published works but this also raises questions about the accuracy of such content. They are found at Wikipedia.org.

Copac National, Academic, and Specialist Library Catalogue (Copac)

Copac is a free-to-use online library that gives access to the aggregated libraries of many National, Academic, and Specialist institutions in the United Kingdom and Ireland. These libraries include those of Oxford University, King’s College London, University College London and the National Libraries of Scotland and Wales. It is found at Copac.ac.uk.

The SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

ADS is a free online library for research content in Astronomy, Physics and Geophysics. It contains more than 7.7 million free full-text articles and abstracts which are free to download for personal use. To use any of the articles from this site in a publication, only a simple acknowledgement is required. It is found at http://adshttp://www.harvard.edu.

Orbis

Orbis is the free online access library for Yale University. It has a catalog of 10 million articles from 22 libraries found on the Yale University Campus. It contains material on a wide range of subjects which include Anthropology through Economics to rare books. Orbis offers access to books, serials, government documents, maps and manuscripts. It is found at http://orbis.library.yale.edu.

Sun Software, Information and Technology Exchange (SunSITE or Sunsite)

Sunsite is sponsored by Sun Microsystems and is a network of servers providing information, software archives and other resources. This project is run in a number of countries around the world by leading universities. The following are a few:

-          University of California, Berkeley in the USA (http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/)

-          University of British Columbia in Canada (http://sunsite.ubc.ca/)

These free libraries are from some of the best sources and universities in the world and provide extensive, up-to-date, and mostly accurate information.