Digital Book Index is now the largest Search Engine for Digital eBooks

The Digital Book Index site now provides access to more than 73,000 titles. It is the only Search Engine System index that gathers both commercial and non-commercial eBooks from more than 1800 publishers and private publishing organisations.

What kinds of on-line books are available?

The titles that are available range from Ancient Agriculture to Space Flight. Most major disciplines are represented -Literature, History, Science and the History of Science, Social Sciences, Medicine, the Arts, Religion, and various Area Studies – such as: Women's Studies etc Americans, Afro-Americans.

An extensive Reference section includes more than 2000 Dictionaries, Encyclopaedias, Thesauri, Glossaries, Bibliographies, Timelines, Chronologies, and Literary Histories. Also included is a superb section on Writing & Style Guides that would be hard to surpass anywhere.

Library subscribers to the popular NetLibrary will also find most of their eBooks indexed as here as well. More than 25,000 titles from public archives are all indexed here and available for free. Many others are available at very moderate cost. Thousands more contemporary titles, ranging from the Nancy Drew mysteries through to Star Trek, Ernest Hemingway or John Le Carré, are available from many leading publishers.

How long has it taken to find and list all of these books?

Over the last decade, a quiet revolution has been going on in the development of a large library of "digital" or "electronic" books. While there are still some gaps, a very substantial body of "Western" thought is available in the form of downloadable or on-line books.

Most major writers, from Plato to Frederick Forsythe, are accessible on the Internet. Subjects range from the highly scholarly to the contemporary and popular, especially as more commercial publishers are discovering the benefits of "on-line" distribution. This index is intended to draw together that large body of resources and make it easier for both libraries and the public to access.

How many books are available on-line?

Digital Book Index provides access to more than 73,000 titles records. It is the sole index that gathers both commercial and non-commercial eBooks from more than 1800 publishers and private publishing organisations.

What’s the site like to use?

Most users should find the organisation of this site reasonably intuitive. I recommend you begin by reading the "Getting Started" section on the main menu after you login.

There is a semi-registration required to use this site however. Logging in requires your name, organisation, and e- mail address. Warning - be sure to click the checkbox to opt OUT of e-mail from this company. If you don’t, you're automatically opted in, which means you are then at the mercy of the marketing and sales promotion’s e-mails.

But how do you search on this site, sometimes search engines confuse me when they return way to many results or results that are not relevant to what I was looking for?

Once you're logged in, you'll have several search and browsing options. Search options include author, title, or author and title. Browse options include subjects, author's list (authors are listed more or less geographically), publishers, and Dewey.

As an example a search for "Hemingway" will find over 25 results. Search results include author, title, edition, format, price (in this case two items are free) and the publishing organisation. Formats here include HTML, text, NetLibrary, and Adobe eBook.

here are three basic searching styles or methods used on this web site:

1. "begins with" (the first characters typed)
   For example, if you type "Shakes", you will get everything that starts with those characters, including Shakespeare.
2. "contains"
   For example, if you type "war", you will get everything that contains the characters "war" anywhere in the title or within a word, including war, warfare, warlord, or hardware
3. "exact match"
   If you type in "war", it will only find "war" in the starting position. It will not find warfare or warlord.

n addition to the listings of books, the site has several links to ebook readers, information for librarians, and information for publishers.

What about books that are Out of Print?

"Out of Print" has a new or different meaning from the printed-book world. OP may mean that a title has been withdrawn from public distribution or that a later edition has superceded it. It may also mean that the address or location on the web link has been lost, scrambled, or changed or that a publisher has gone "out of business" or no longer maintains a Website.

How much does it cost if you want to use the web site?

Use of this site is Free. English-language book texts available at http://www.digitalbookindex.com. The actual search page for this resource is at http://www.digitalbookindex.com/search001a.htm. Before you get to that you may have to login at http://www.digitalbookindex.com/logina.htm

Arthur Hissey
Computer Research & Technology
www.crt.net.au