If you’re looking for things to read online, you’ve hit the jackpot. Below is a link to the Sharing Learning blog which has a post on 20 free online libraries and reading rooms. These links are to literature that’s out of copyright protection as well as to current literature, books and academic journals that can be accessed because of the authors’ belief in free and open access to information.

http://myeslcorner.blogspot.com/2009/11/20-free-online-libraries-and-reading.html

Newsy.com is a multiperspective online video news site that monitors, synthesizes and presents the world’s news coverage.  In an increasingly connected world, access to multiperspective news is in demand by global citizens. Through short video segments available on the web and mobile devices, Newsy.com offers a way to accelerate your global understanding of a news story.

Newsy.com takes a step back to show how the world’s news organizations are reporting a story – providing an unprecedented global and macro point of view. You’ll find CNN right next to Al Jazeera, the BBC right next to ABC. Newsy.com also covers major newspapers, news magazines as well as top blogs from around the world. What are the key differences in reporting? Who has a unique insight? By monitoring the world’s new coverage, we provide immediate analysis of news perspectives so you can form your own opinion.

http://www.newsy.com/

There are a variety of free e-Book websites that allow you to download e-Books to your computer or read them online. Some sites give readers access to older books which have aged out of their copyright protection and some offer brand new material from authors who are trying to promote their work in this format. Planet eBook declares themselves “the home of free classic literature.”  They offer just over 60 literary classics which can be downloaded to your computer, free and legal. Works by authors such as Charles Dickens, Jules Verne, Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker and Leo Tolstoy can be enjoyed and shared with your friends or classmates. Planet eBooks also provides a suggestion box for classics you would like them to offer.

http://www.planetebook.com/

As the longlist of the Award has recently been announced, you might want to look at last year’s nominees complete with brief annotations.

http://www.impacdublinaward.ie/fictionmatters/Fiction_matters_2009.pdf

“As the home of the original literary mash-up and New York Times Best Seller, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Quirk Classics is the premier brand in literary monster mash-ups and remixed classics. Soon to be literary cult-classics, Quirk Classics are designed to be cleverly conceived, well-written, and entertainingly executed masterpieces that bring new fans to both classic works of literature and to original works of genre-based fiction.”

This series of books has a growing fan base–you know who you are–and there are plenty more books for the series. Watch for these books to become available soon in our free Overdrive downloadable audiobook service so you can listen to them from your iPhone or iPod.

http://www.quirkclassics.com/

The Daily Plate, helping you eat smarter, is the easy free way to help you track what you’re eating each day. The core essentials for the site are a huge database of foods, a food diary/meal journal to list everything you eat, and a database of activities to track calories that you burn.

http://www.thedailyplate.com/

The Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch program helps consumers and businesses make choices for healthy oceans. Our recommendations indicate which seafood items are “Best Choices,” “Good Alternatives,” and which ones you should “Avoid.”

Seafood Watch recommendations are science-based, peer reviewed, and use ecosystem-based criteria. Since 1999, we’ve distributed tens of millions of pocket guides, our iPhone application has been downloaded more than 70,000 times, and we have close to 200 partners across North America, including the two largest food service companies in the U.S.

http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/seafoodwatch.aspx

Our Courts is a web-based education project designed to teach students civics and inspire them to be active participants in our democracy. Our Courts is the vision of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who is concerned that students are not getting the information and tools they need for civic participation, and that civics teachers need better materials and support.

http://www.ourcourts.org/default.php

Metacafe is an online video entertainment site; sort of an offbeat cousin of YouTube although they are totally unrelated. “As the world’s leading independent online video site, Metacafe makes it easy to find videos from your favorite content creators – and we help you discover new ones.” It’s loaded with movie trailers, music videos, tv clips and more.

http://www.metacafe.com/

The United States Geological Survey provides some very interesting pages on their website. One of them shows maps with locations of earthquakes around the world within the last 7 days. Earthquakes in the news make this site a great resource as it provides exact locations, rates of magnitude and answers to frequently asked questions.

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/