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Sometimes you can just download that book – Free cultural resources

Dan Russell • January 15, 2016
 SearchReSearch
Republished with permission from SearchReSearch
Sometimes you can just download that book – Free cultural resources Dan Russell

Did you know that you can often find online PDF versions of books for free?

I recently found a great blogpost at OpenCulture.org pointing out that lots of places with large catalogs (especially museums) are scanning their collections and making them available for reading online. For instance, check out MetPublications, the Metropolitan Museum's site offering “five decades of Met Museum publications on art history available to read, download, and/or search for free.”

In particular, for SearchResearchers, note this:



Clicking on the "Read online" link will take you to the full-view version of the book at Google Books. (For example, here's that book, "Adorning the World: Art of the Marquesas Islands" as seen on Google Books.)


These same folks previously offered 397 complete books free, including American Impressionism and Realism: The Painting of Modern Life, 1885–1915; Leonardo da Vinci: Anatomical Drawings from the Royal Library; and Wisdom Embodied: Chinese Buddhist and Daoist Sculpture in The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Since then they've grown the online collection to no fewer than 448 art catalogs and other books besides. Those are all available for free, along with the 400,000 free art images the museum put online last year.

It's worth keeping your eyes open, just to keep track of what's available online.

Other Links to Free Content from OpenCulture.org:
Download Over 250 Free Art Books From the Getty Museum
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Puts 400,000 High-Res Images Online & Makes Them Free to Use
The Guggenheim Puts 109 Free Modern Art Books Online
Free Art Images & Books from Great Museums, and Free Books from University Presses
800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kindle & Other Devices (Epic of Gilgamesh; Beowulf...)

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About the Author

Dan RussellDan Russell

I study the way people search and research. I guess that makes me an anthropologist of search. While I work at Google, my blog and G+ posts reflects my own thoughts and not those of my employer. I am FIA's Future-ist in Residence. More »

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