Today I practically stumbled upon something so massive it’s amazing I didn’t bump into it earlier. The Digital Book Index is a meta-indexing project that provides links to over 165,000 full-text digital books, the vast majority of them free, though some come with a fee.

Some of their key topics are:

Arts:   Art & graphic arts, architecture, dance, decorative arts, costume, theatre & drama, music, photography, film & video
Children’s Books:   Contemporary & classic children’s books and stories
History:   American, English, Irish, European, Asian, African, local and regional histories
Law:   US Constitutional history, state constitutions, treaties, state statues & laws, legal ethics rules, copyright, and consumer information.
Literature:   Ranging from Chaucer & other medieval texts to modern, contemporary fiction
Math & Sciences:   Mathematics, astronomy, biology, botany & zoology, genetics, chemistry, physics, engineering, electronics, & computer science
Medicine & Health:   For professionals and patients including anatomy, radiology, infectious diseases, surgery, oncology, dentistry, and more
Philosophy and Religion:   Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Shinto, Taoism, etc.
Reference:   Dictionaries, encyclopedias, thesauri, style guides, etc.
Social Sciences:   Anthropology, sociology, Psychology, Folklore, Mythology, Economics, Politics

It searches more than 1800 publishers, universities, and private sites including:

• Boston Public Library
• Chicago Historical Society
• Cornell University
• Duke University Library
• Google
• Gutenberg Project
• Harvard University Library
• Internet Archive
• Library of Congress
• National Library of Canada
• NetLibrary (OCLC)
• New York Public Library
• U.S. National Park Service
• University of Utah
• Wiley Interscience
• Yale University

And…

•  Approximately 200 University Presses
• Several hundred commercial publishers including Bantam Books, MacMillan, Random House, and Simon & Schuster

Yea, this is digital reading at its finest hour.  Pick up your Nook, your Kindle, your iPad, or all three, and enjoy.