Free NES + Free Books

The Minibosses doing Castlevania III. If you are an old-school Nintendo junkie, put away the power glove and check out this site. vNES lets you play 830 games online. No ROM emulations, downloads or nuttin'.

As for the free books, Fred alerted me to this pretty popular list (at least judging by the number of Diggs) from Fried Beef. We've posted many of these sites before, but that doesn't mean it's not worth revisiting.

The YouTubes for Data and PDFs - I Don't Get It....

Happy Easter! Enjoy the Peep Show (warning, some might consider this R-rated depending on your sensitivity to marshmallow-on-marshmallow action).

We've seen a lot of buzz about two sites recently. Swivel has generated buzz as the YouTube of Data. Meanwhile, Scribd is heralded as the YouTube of PDFs. I've taken a look at both sites and my reaction is that both are filled with lots of garbage. Sure, there are some good material on the sites, but I really don't understand the appeal. I'd love to hear some different opinions, so comment or email and tell me why I'm wrong.

Fred's Finds: Don't Miss These Great Sites

eMule Poetry Archives - Many don't think of eMule as an academic resource but there are tons of copyright free poems here.

ReadPrint - A nice collection of books, by name and/or by author. Skim the list to see what you might be interested in.

Librivox - The open audiobook site where users submit their home recordings.

World Lecture Hall - This is "old reliable"--been around a while but still useful. It is a directory of online syllabi and courses indicating if they include audio and video.

Digital Book Index - One of the largest resources for finding an ebook.

Rare Book Room

This site contains about 400 rare books photographed page by page at high-resolution (more than 200 MB in some cases). Using this site, you can browse all of the classics prepared in this way by Octavo over the past ten years. Among the selections are original editions of Poor Richard's Almanac, lots of Shakespeare, old bibles and classic science texts. Go here to see all texts available.

Self Made Scholar

The Self Made Scholar is a fantastic new website on our favorite topic - learning for free on the web. Jamie has compiled the most comprehensive and usable list I've seen of free online classes. Over the next few months, the site will continue to gather key resources and post extended articles teaching people how to learn independently.

I spoke with Jamie over the weekend and she's also agreed to do a post here on The Stingy Scholar from time to time to discuss some issues related to free learning and point out some good materials he's posting on Self Made Scholar.

Floodle Free eBooks

Floodle buys the rights to ebooks and posts a new one free every day. While some of the options are a little sketchy (get paid to watch TV, real estate foreclosures, etc.) there are also lots of cookbooks and quirky submissions (such as the big book of puppy names). And if you don't like what's available, ask in the forum. Most of the ebooks are things people asked for.

The Trouble with Textbooks, Part 1

People often ask me what got me started on my somewhat quixotic quest to tell the world about free textbooks. The real answer is probably that I’m slightly crazy. Rooted in some deep unanalyzed recess of my brain, next to the squeaking wheel that’s responsible for my constant ire about Boston’s underperforming public transportation system and just below the room full of angry gnomes who keep a torch burning for the lost cause of copyright reform, there is a ball of anger that I’ve decided to throw at the textbook industry. Of course, even a moderately crazy fool like me knows better than to mention a room full of angry gnomes with flaming torches during an interview with US News and World Reports or NPR. Instead, I tell the story of Giancoli’s Physics.

To start the story, I have to backtrack to 1991, when I was a junior at Billings West High School (official motto: “Failure is Not an Option”). I took two full years of physics at West High under the tutelage of John Linn, an irascible Korean war vet with a pocketful of great stories and a firm grasp of how to teach physics to fifteen-year-olds. I loved that class, even though I didn’t really get a good handle on vector addition until years later when I learned how to operate marine radar. I still have the 3.5” x 5” notecards we were allowed to make to hold the formulae we needed on tests.

Fast forward to 2003. After misspending my youth in the Caribbean, I found myself enrolled in a program studying geology at Northeastern University (official motto: “We’re # 98!”). After spending hundreds upon hundreds of dollars during my first year on textbooks that I barely used, I was beginning to wise up to the textbook racket. My degree required that I take two semesters of Physics, never mind that I’d already had two full years in high school. I took the first semester with a friend, and we both balked at the cost of the text, around $130 for Giancoli’s just-released 5th edition.

I was incensed. I’d taken this class once already, in 1991, with a well-used book that was probably printed in the mid-1980’s, and as far as I could tell nothing in introductory algebra-based physics had changed in the intervening years. Newton’s Laws still reigned. Force still equaled mass times acceleration. Gravity still pulled objects earthward at 9.8 meters per second squared. I couldn’t for the life of me understand what could justify a brand-new edition of a physics textbook when there were so many existing books that could have explained the concepts just as well.

Searching online for a more affordable alternative, I found a link to Ben Crowell’s Light and Matter series, a set of physics textbooks available entirely free online. My interest was piqued, but this wasn’t the book assigned for my class, so my friend and I ended up splitting the cost for Giancoli. I was consoled by the fact that at least the book would last me through both of my required physics classes.

Still, I was intrigued by the whole concept of free online textbooks. It seemed to me then, and it seems to me now, like an inherently practical idea to publish books online. I started digging around and found more and more free books. Then, in January of 2004, the Make Textbooks Affordable campaign unleashed their report RipOff 101, which confirmed what I had begun to find out on my own: the textbook companies were playing students like a pickpocket at Mardi Gras. I decided I had to do something, while I was still a student, to try to get professors to start using these free books. So out of frustration with Giancoli and my chance encounter with Crowell, Textbook Revolution was born.

Several years and several thousand hours of work later, Textbook Revolution is a thriving site with a couple of hundred thousand visitors a year, links to hundreds of free books, and plans to grow even larger over the coming year. I’m finishing my senior year of college. I’m midway through the final class on my list of requirements, which just happens to be Physics II. My friend lost the copy of Giancoli’s 5th edition we shared in the fall of 2003, but it doesn’t matter because since I took Physics I the field of introductory algebra-based physics has advanced enough to merit a new and improved 6th edition, only $153 at Amazon!

This time around, I didn’t even bother to go to the bookstore. Instead, I headed for the library to see if I could grab one of the two copies of the sixth edition available. I was too late to get either of them, but there on the shelf, I found copies of the second, third, and fifth editions. What I found out when I compared them will be the subject of part 2 of The Trouble with Textbooks, coming soon.

The NYPL Rocks

We've talked before about making the most of your library card, but I wanted to touch upon my recent experiences with the New York Public Library. My wife and I had been looking for some books on investing but couldn't get them shipped to Spain cheaply. Fortunately, we still had our NYPL cards.

We've been downloading a ton of materials from the site, and I've been really impressed by the depth of their collection and the friendly user interface. The print materials are easy to access and download quickly as pdfs (I usually print them out configuring my printer to do four pages per sheet). Although the audio files Overdrive DRM is annoying, you can get the mp3s onto your iPod by first burning them to a CD through Window Media Player. You can then import the audio to iTunes.

Signing up for a membership is easy and free if you are in New York as a resident or student. You are only required to enter a name and a New York address where the card will be shipped. Afterwards you will use the card number and a pin number to access the materials. Paid memberships are also available for out-of-state or foreign users.

The Independent Scholar's Handbook

Although I'm posting this before giving a real good looking-over, this looks like a great find. The Canadian Academy of Independent Scholars has made available the full 322 page text of the The Independent Scholar's Handbook written by Ronald Gross (direct link to pdf). This book discusses how to practice serious scholarship independent from an university or institution. We're not talking platitudes or self-help nonsense - there is a good deal of information on how to access research databases, receive grants and awards, collaborate and publish. Thanks to Gladys for the link.

Great, Sketchy eBook Archive

I'm going to make a leap of faith and say this massive collection of free pdf eBooks is completely legit. I'm also going to lock my windows to keep the leprechauns from beating the tooth fairy to those molars under the pillow. But hey, if this is piracy, this is Blackbeard caliber work. A near limitless collection of business books, programming resources, comic books, and more. So get them while they last...or take a moral stand...whatever. As they always say, piracy is the highest form of flattery.

More eBook Sites to Explore

Searchlores has compiled on one page the search engines for several ebook archives (Project Gutenberg, UPenn, etc.). The page comments are full of additional links, tips, and hacks. At Searchlores' targets you can also find advice on finding music, images, laws, passwords, barcodes, and several other search objectives.

For texts in other languages, see Intratext. The extensive archive focuses on a broad number of languages, including minority languages.

OpenSourceShakespeare has a nicely designed Shakespeare archive complete with full text and concordance search capability. OSS also provides the option to see all the lines for a single character.

If you're looking for more eBooks, see this previous post.

Harrison Bergeron

A great short story. See Kurt Vonnegut's Welcome to the Monkey House for the complete collection.

Rapidshared = 2038 eBooks (and growing)

Rapidshared.org lets you access all of the ebooks on the Rapidshare.de fileservers. From their site:

RapidShared.ORG is a catalog of materials, hosted on the servers of rapidshare.de, the world leading file hosting service. Aim of this project is to gather links spread all over the net in one single place and to structurize them in a user-friendly way. All links get checked (if valid, for duplicate entries, etc) to make everything even more comfortable!

I think their servers were overwhelmed the other day, but everything seems to be working now. When I find more ebook links (such as this), I'll always include them on my previous ebooks post.