Where to Find Free Digital Media (Legally)

[thebiballerina]

All of the following resources offer primarily free digital media (ebooks, audiobooks, audio, video, images, software, and more). This is never going to be a complete list. I tried to list mostly true open access projects (as opposed to freemium services or services with advertising). Many of these resources are international, but this list may still be somewhat USA-centric, as those are the services I know of and can access. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_digital_library_projects for a list of more digital library resources.

If you are comfortable with a more comprehensive variety of resources, this wiki lists many of those, along with more legitimate/well-known services.

This list is also posted on my Tumblr.

First off, don’t forget about your local, school, workplace, state/province/territory, or national library. Check the website or ask a librarian.

• It likely has an ebook and digital audiobook lending program through their own or a 3rd-party application (such as Libby/Overdrive or SimplyE).
• Libraries often have some subscriptions to databases for items like journal articles, news articles, images, streaming video/audio, downloadable video/audio, and additional ebooks. Your library may even aggregate reference information on the items from each database it subscribes to into a central searchable database.
• This generally requires a library card or student/employee account, but you can often sign up for one online (assuming you are eligible).
• You might find additional programs through a county/state/territory/province library, national library, and various government institutions. Don’t assume it’s just your local public library that you have access to content from.

If you live in the United States, the Books Unbanned initiative features several major city libraries which offer cards with access to their digital collections (either the entire catalogue, or just commonly challenged books) to teens and young adults nationwide. The program began with Brooklyn Public Library, and as of October 2023, also includes Seattle Public Library, Boston Public Library, LA County Library (California residents only), and San Diego Public Library. You can apply for as many of these cards as you are eligible for; age requirements vary, but currently, if you are 12-26 years old, you are eligible for at least one of these cards.

Some more generally available services are listed below.

Digital Public Library of America (DPLA)
https://dp.la/

• Text, images, videos, sounds
• No sign up or library card required.
• Digital library which “aggregates metadata from libraries, museums and institutions around the country.” Content hubs whose digital content you can search using DPLA include ARTstor, HathiTrust, the Internet Archive, the Library of Congress, the National Archives and Records Administration, the United States Government Publishing Office (GPO), and more.
• Aggregates openly licensed ebooks which can be freely downloaded.
  • Web bookshelf: https://freebooks.dp.la/
  • Mobile app: select DPLA as your library with SimplyE

Internet Archive
https://archive.org/

• Music and audio, films and videos, images, books, software
• Some items are available for download, others for lending.
• Also searchable with DPLA.

Project Gutenberg (USA)
https://www.gutenberg.org/

• Ebooks (primarily), with some audiobooks, music, datasets, and images
• Items are from the public domain in the USA (so generally at least 95+ years old).
• Many file formats (including plain text) available to download and/or view online.

Standard Ebooks 
https://standardebooks.org/

• Ebooks
• Books in the public domain
• "Standard Ebooks takes ebooks from sources like Project Gutenberg, formats and typesets them using a carefully designed and professional-grade style manual, fully proofreads and corrects them, and then builds them to create a new edition that takes advantage of state-of-the-art ereader and browser technology."

Project Gutenberg (outside the USA)

• Project Gutenberg Australia: http://gutenberg.net.au/
• Project Gutenberg Canada: http://gutenberg.ca/
• Affiliated projects have been started in other regions and countries, including Europe, Luxembourg, Finland, the Philippines, Russia, and Taiwan. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Gutenberg#Affiliated_projects for a list and more info.
• Items are from the public domain in that specific country.
• May have items which are unavailable through Project Gutenberg USA due to copyright law differences.

LibriVox
https://librivox.org/

• audiobooks
• Audiobooks of books which are available in the public domain.
• Streaming and download of various file formats available.

Project Gutenberg Self-Publishing Press
http://self.gutenberg.org/

• Ebooks
• Mainly contemporary books and poetry, for “personal study and non-commercial sharing”

SimplyE

• Ebooks and audiobooks
• SimplyE is a lending service used by many libraries, but they also have their own free library of books available.
• Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.nypl.simplified.simplye&hl=en_US
• iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/simplye/id1046583900

Open Culture
https://www.openculture.com/

• Art/images, music, movies, eBooks, audiobooks, courses, language lessons, and more
• Focused on cultural and educational media

BASE (Bielefield Academic Search Engine)
https://www.base-search.net/

• Search engine mainly for academic web resources
• You can filter search to only open access resources (about 60% of the indexed documents).
• "BASE provides more than 240 million documents from more than 8,000 content providers."
• Indexes content providers from many countries, including the U.S., the U.K., France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland, Switzerdland, Brazil, the Netherlands, Australia, Indonesia, Japan, Canada, Russia, Belgium, and Turkey.
  

Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
https://www.doaj.org/

• Directory of open access, peer-reviewed journals and articles
• In any subject area
• Indexes over 15,000 journals
• Accepts journals and articles from any country in any language

arXiv
https://arxiv.org/

• Scholarly articles
• In physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance, statistics, electrical engineering and systems science, and economics

BioMedCentral
https://www.biomedcentral.com/

• Scholarly articles
• In medicine, science, technology, and engineering
• From around 300 peer-reviewed journals

Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL)
https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/

• Literature related to biodiversity, natural history, botany, etc.

EBSCO Open Dissertations
https://biblioboard.com/opendissertations/

• Theses and dissertations

ibiblio
https://www.ibiblio.org/

• A “collection of collections” which hosts or links to collections/archives of open information (including articles, images, audio, video, etc.) and software.

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