Project Gutenberg

Despite certain limitations in content due to copyright, Project Gutenberg is a great resource for our middle school library. Applicable content in the public domain for middle school students includes: myths, fables, fairytales, and classic novels. Project Gutenberg has great search and browsing capabilities; the children’s shelf had particularly good resources, including reading lists by genre, and links to biographical author information. Additionally, the children’s shelf also show more provides links to both audio and text-versions of the resources. The flexibility of the format works with a variety of learners and learning styles. The structure of the site is helpfully transparent with easily findable help features. This resource is free, and therefore should be utilized to its admirable extent. show less

This site is most useful for someone who knows what they're looking for because its organized as a wiki and the text is presented in a simple format on the page with no illustrations. One of the major benefits is that works of literature in the public domain such as Shakespeare are here along with more folktales. Also on the main page is a list of works that are downloaded the most to give a sense of what's popular. Yet this is not a site to truly browse around due to its organization, but show more its the most useful when you know what you're looking for and want to get an accessible version of the text without having to search through various book editions. A site that works best for either a teacher or a high school student who's doing a literature project since its not visually exciting in a way that would appeal to a younger reader. show less

This site thinks it has a legacy to live up to and the home page makes it clear they take themselves seriously. It only has books in the public domain, so everything is by people who have been for at least 50 years. Books must be downloaded rather than read online. The site is also very difficult to navigate because the user must know the author or title to search. Otherwise, it's easy to get lost in a convoluted chain of keywords.

The site is fairly easy to navigate, and attractive in appearance. Searching can be conducted through author, title, subject, language, and Library of Congress classification. It also includes searching parameters that fit specifically the digital nature of the content, for instance, a user can search by filetype (pdf, for kindle, MIDI, etc.). However, there are no parameters that inform of the age-level of the material, or intended audience. Additionally, there does not seem to be a keyword show more searching feature, just subjects based on what appears to be Library of Congress Subject Headings. Lists of the Top 100 and Recently Added books are included, and you can browse by author or title. Includes a lot of non-English language content. This site seems most easily navigable if the user has a specific title or author in mind. After visiting Through the Looking Glass, I discovered that there was a category “Children's Literature”, but it hadn't been apparent to me on the home page. Records also includes information about a title's copyright status, which is important because of the downloadable nature of the content. Clicking on the “Download” tab displays all the different formats a particular title is available in. The HTML option, is just text on one continuous page, with out any page breaks, or inclusions of the illustrations. Readers must scroll to navigate through the entire book. PDFs seem to be scans of the book's pages and include images. However, there are a number of other formats available, though none of them were really compatible with my laptop, but this might be a useful site for a kindle user to acquire books, or to download onto a smart phone. One interesting tab for Twitter users generates a tweet, noting the title of the book and its URL. When you read books online, a bookmarks feature keeps track of what you are reading show less