Legal library to borrow out esoteric books?

[Arania]

I have neither more space nor more money to get more physical books (I actually gave half of my books away when we moved last year) and I have been looking to find free books or libraries but most what I found is either shady or clearly illegal (why has no one closed Scribd down yet?) and you have to pay for on top. The one page which looked legit, as it was a free online library, proved to be violating copyright as well. And while I am well aware copyright laws need to be updated to the reality of a world where basically anything goes, I prefer not to support those who earn money with other people's work.

 

I have literally no money on my own, as I get no disability or other support money, and my partner refuses to pay for stuff he is not using himself right now as we are short on money (moving and renovating isn't cheap). If there is no place to legally borrow from, that's not so bad as I do not absolutely need to read more. But it would be cool to find a few more non-fiction things to read when I feel unwell.

 

Additionally, if someone knows of a place to get legal copies of LWBs... most of ours somehow got lost in the move. No idea how anything could get lost, as my partner is super organized with such things and planned it all extremely well, but those and some other things likely in the same box are gone.

 

 

[gregory]

ScribD should indeed be shut down. 

 

A lot of libraries do ebook loans. Mine does - for free. If you search in googlebooks, they have links to library holdings, including ebooks.

 

Certainly things like the Book of Thoth are available on line.  It may be worth googling what you want in case it is actually up there. LWBs - publishers will often help.  And you could post in the ISO threads for the ones you are missing ?

[Arania]

I don't have any RL library to go to - remote village here. But as this is Germany, even most libraries in cities don't do digital. Where we moved from,the library didn't even have a way to get there by public transport and not a computer in sight - everything wasstill done by the good old card system.

 

I tried googlebooks, but mostly I don't even know what I am looking for.

[gregory]

NO but if you are borrowing ebooks from a library, you can do that on line - however far away the library may be.

 

What KIND of thing are you looking for, then ?

 

As far as I know this site is legit:

http://www.openculture.com/2018/02/1600-occult-books-now-digitized-put-online.html 

 

Likewise this one:

https://sacred-texts.com/eso/index.htm

 

And this one admits that there m,ay have been texts submitted that are still under copyright and they will remove them if asked, so that makes them decent people at least.

http://www.hermetics.org/ebooks.html

 

If I'm wrong about these sites, please someone tell me, as I use them myself and do try to avoid being a Bad Peron !

[geoxena]

Check out the Internet Archive's open library, most titles of which are donated to them by public libraries.  There's a range of quality of the scans because, I believe, the donors scanned them, but most can be downloaded in a number of formats.  If you register, you can borrow an ebook for two weeks.  If I recall correctly, you can renew.

 

https://archive.org/details/inlibrary?tab=about

 

[moonglow]

x

Edited March 20, 2020 by moonglow

[geoxena]

5 minutes ago, moonglow said:

Thank you for posting this. I kept seeing the header on archive.org but hadn’t properly read it... I thought this was only for people with a print disability.

You're very welcome.  I'd been using their Wayback Machine to look up old websites for years and only realized in the last two years or so that they have an open library there, too!  After having discovered it, I used it quite a bit for books on sewing and crafts.

Edited February 23, 2020 by geoxena

[Arania]

Thanks, those sites are really helpful.

 

I'm mostly into browsing stuff I might not know much about yet. Even  some way-out-there theories can give some insight, if only into how the minds of others work.

[reall]

think US games offer most of their lwb as free download from their official web page?;)

just click deck you are interested & see does it say Booklet icon under deck img; https://www.usgamesinc.com/Medicine-Woman-Tarot-Deck.html?category_id=4

also I was surprised to discover sort of Russian fb web openly sharing new book titles they obviously lack piracy concept so i'm not sharing these links!;)

Edited February 25, 2020 by reall

[Arania]

I think in many countries the laws are too different to worry about our type of copyright. I know for example that in Thailand, non-Thai songs are just translated and then used because then they do not fall under copyright anymore.

 

I will have to check how many of my decks are from US Games, but chances are quite a few. Thanks.

Edited February 25, 2020 by Arania
typos

[katrinka]

It's been well-covered here, I have nothing to add but Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/43548
Props for not supporting copyright infringement. The best books are old anyway, and most likely in the public domain.

[_R_]

For older works (in various languages) and many journals, try http://iapsop.com/

 

Additionally, the Internet Archive provides limited access to in-copyright material, but one must register and queue for the e-book, and then, like a normal library book, it can only be borrowed for a couple of weeks.

 

For scans of older works in German, the Bavarian State Library website is very good: https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/

[Arania]

Oooh thanks. That will be a lot of reading in the near future.

Edited February 26, 2020 by Arania