The best digital libraries for students. Now let's move on to specialized libraries

Inga Mayakovskaya

Reading time: 4 minutes

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More and more often today the assertion is heard that our country "flew" from the rating of the most reading in the world. However, in reality, these arguments are based only on the results of the book trade, and every year there are more and more people reading. It's just that now it has become more convenient to flip through books directly on electronic media or listen to their audio versions. After all, a whole library in one "reading room" (approx. - e-book) is much more convenient than a heavy paper book in a bag.

Well, for those who are tired of rushing around the Web in search of the book they need, we suggest that you familiarize yourself with the list of the best, in the opinion of readers, online libraries.

Electronic library Moshkov (approx. - lib.ru)

Since its creation in 97th year, it is the oldest in the Russian Internet.

Here you will find almost any work of Russian classics. It is also worth noting that most of their texts are taken from academic publications. Unfortunately, you won't be able to download the book here, but reading on the site is easy.

modernlib.ru

A very extensive resource, where you will find more than 40 thousand of a wide variety of books - for every reader's taste. From classics and ladies' novels to history books, science fiction, and more.

All books have annotations for easy selection.

It is worth noting the possibility of downloading (completely free of charge) books (approx. - in fb2 format).

Live library (approx. - livelib.ru)

The beauty of this library is that it is, rather, a social network of readers - a kind of club for those who like not only to "rustle" electronic pages, but also to leave an opinion about what they read.

Actually, on the basis of these opinions, ratings of the best books are compiled here.

You can download the work you like “without leaving the checkout” for free or, if you wish, buy it in the online store.

webreading.ru

On this resource you will find both the leaders of book sales and the most interesting novelties. The site offers for reading both classics and modern literature, as well as non-fiction books. Among the latter one can find chemistry and jurisprudence, philosophy and psychology, and much more.

As for downloading, it is allowed (and in different formats).

bookz.ru

Serious library, offering readers more than 70,000 books.

The works can be searched in various ways - the search is convenient and there is an alphabetical index.

You can download, download formats are offered to choose from.

imwerden.de

Here you will not find 2 million books - as, for example, on the completely paid Librusek, but on the other hand, rare books from the literature of the 18-20 centuries, as well as ancient Russian literature and individual works of foreign authors, are presented to the attention of readers.

The site was founded in 2000, and since then it has been maintained and regularly updated by its creator living in Germany.

Downloading of works is available in various formats (approx. - PDF, MP3 and AVI).

gumer.info

On this site there is no modern literature for "reading" under coffee. For the attention of readers - scientific literature, history, linguistics, humor, philosophy and jurisprudence, etc.

More than 50 thousand readers a day, more than 5 thousand articles and books. One of the most popular scientific sites where you can find a book that is not in other libraries.

There are no downloads of books, but reading is available and absolutely free.

runivers.ru

Want to dive into history? Do you need any historical background for work / study? Then you are here!

A lot of useful historical literature, atlases and maps, historical documents, etc.

Convenient search, readability and even download in different formats.

Aldebaran

Today (after the closing of the most popular libraries) it is the most popular resource for book lovers.

A very large collection of books with annotations that are available for reading and for downloading in different formats.

The number of books is over 82 thousand, and the fund is regularly replenished.

samolit.com

On this resource you can download, publish copyright materials, create your own virtual libraries, write reviews and even earn money. Most of all, the site is loved by young writers.

Downloading is possible in fb2, epub, txt format, and there is also its own converter.

The genres are very different. From contemporary literature and classics to poetry, business and scientific literature.

litres.ru

This site is a store of electronic books (including audio versions), but in the free section of the site there is also a library itself - about 26 thousand books, foreign bestsellers and fashionable novelties, classics and modern literature.

Downloading is available in various formats - but only after registration.

litportal.ru

More than 57,000 books of various genres.

When registering, the reader receives certain privileges: for example, the ability to independently change the font or page design, participate in polls, create bookmarks or view book ratings.

There is a download (in 14 formats), but reading is available on the sites "at partners".

litmir.co

The library contains over 210 thousand books, added by authors and moderators.

There is a convenient search and "sorting" of books, you can leave reviews and give ratings.

We will be very pleased if you share your feedback on the best, in your opinion, online libraries!

One of the first and most popular Russian-language electronic libraries, it opened in 1994. Authors and readers add to the library on a daily basis on a voluntary basis. The service does not take money, you can read absolutely everything for free. The only negative is that you cannot download the book.

2. Aldebaran

Library "Aldebaran" offers to download the book for free in any of the convenient electronic formats (epub, fb2, rtf, mobi, pdf), and before this step, familiarize yourself with its excerpt. Service level!

4. Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky

A big lover of Dostoevsky's work, enthusiast Sergei Rublev decided to collect all information about the writer on one site. These are not just the writer's books (by the way, lifetime editions have been digitized), but also the latest news about film adaptations and TV shows, research, as well as a list of museums and a photo archive.

5. TarraNova library

TarraNova asks to call itself not an electronic library, but an archive. The site's management says that the main difference is that all texts are posted officially, with the consent of the authors. However, ReadRate sees the main zest in something else: TarraNova posts not only author's texts, but also translations (with the names of the translators). There are few well-known books here, but you can find a lot of interesting and worthwhile ones.

6. Presidential Library. Yeltsin

Presidential Library Yeltsin digitizes rare books from Russian public libraries and collects them from thematic collections. There are a lot of interesting things. For example, for the Year of Literature, the service has prepared a selection "Fact and Image of Russian History in the Works of Russian Writers", where Derzhavin's "Ode" is the digitization of the "Novosti" magazine for June 1799.

You can use the free online library "Liberia" only after registration. Users have many responsibilities (publishing books, communicating), but they say the selection of books is good.

9. Electronic library "Litmir"

The electronic library "Litmir" contains more than 200,000 books. It is convenient to read them online, but when downloading, the site asks to install a special program that scares off many new users. In the "Forum" section of the site, there is quite lively communication of users with each other. At the end of 2015, the site went through several lawsuits with the EKSMO publishing house and the Minister of Culture of the Russian Federation Vladimir Medinsky, who insisted on the closure of the site, pointing out the illegal content on it. In 2016, the site changed its owner and started to fix it. There are noticeably fewer books, and active work is underway to exclude illegal content.

12. Library club

The electronic library and online store "Biblioclub" offers interesting conditions: by purchasing 10 books, you can become the owner of the "Bookman" status and get half of the store's content for free use. The platform also provides the "Genius" status - this is when you have free access to all the books on the site. A good option, especially if you are interested in literature on business and self-development, educational collections.

ThankYou.ru - portal of music and literature provided free of charge. A good selection of books in electronic format fb2, as well as the opportunity for aspiring authors to publish their book for free.

17. "Bookcase"

Cozy children's library "Electronic library". Now it contains about 400 scanned scientific publications, divided by areas for the convenience of users. These are "Theory of Literature", "Russian Literature", "Literature of the Peoples of Russia and the CIS Countries", "Foreign Literature", "Folkloristics" and others. The library is being replenished, on the site it is possible not to register.

You bought an e-book reader, but it turns out that downloading the book is not so easy? Some sites offer viruses instead of books, others send only half of them under the guise of a whole book, and still others turn out to be sites without books, but with advertisements ... In fact, everything is not so complicated. In this collection you will find the best digital libraries. These free online libraries will delight you with a wide selection of books and a user-friendly interface. All sites are time-tested.

RoyalLib

One of the most popular electronic libraries. The books are offered here in different formats - and you can download the one that best suits your reader. Another handy feature of the library is online reading. You customize the design of the "reader" to your liking - and enjoy reading from a large computer screen. You can stop at any time - make a bookmark in the book and return to it whenever you want.

Twirpx

Here you can find rare books and magazines. The topics of books in this library are incredibly wide. From fiction and entertainment novels to such narrow scientific topics as, for example, "Descriptive Geometry and Engineering Graphics." Conveniently, on the home page you will find thematic catalogs. Let's say you're interested in celebrity diaries. You will see the section "Memoirs, Diaries, Autobiographies", go there and wonder how many more fascinating books you can read.

The only drawback of the library is registration. To download the files, you will have to register, but no e-mails from this library will come. The books here are still free, but download them for "points". Each book is "worth" from 5 to 50 points, depending on its value. When registering, you are automatically credited with 100 points - that's enough for the first days.

What to do next? Upload your materials to the library. A book or magazine that is not yet in this library. The student can upload their lecture notes. And with every download of your file, you will be awarded points. Thus, the library is constantly updated with new books. If you absolutely do not want to “work for the good” of the library, then when you run out of points, you can simply register again.

eScriptorium

This is a repository of rare editions and manuscripts. If you did not find something in the previous library, then, perhaps, the necessary book is waiting for you here. Once downloaded, you can put it in the Twirpx library and earn points.

Flibusta

This is a pirate library. While all previous libraries respect copyright, Flibusta offers free downloads for those books that authors and publishers would like to sell.

The question arises - to download or not to download? It all depends on your conscience and budget. Many readers have found this way: they download the book of the author, whose work they want to get acquainted with, for free, read it and, if they like the book, buy it in paper version for their home library. And encouragement for the author, and a good book on the reader's shelf.

Also, this library is suitable for schoolchildren and students who are taking a course in modern literature. After all, it is impossible to buy all the books included in the program. Moreover, for the author, every reading is a PR, and many writers really do not mind that their books be freely downloaded.

If you have not found the book you need in this library, come back in a few days. Often copyright owners demand that a book be removed, but after a while it is uploaded again.

Samolit

Not all books in this library are available for free. But the free section is very large, and the books posted there can be downloaded in as many as seven different formats. Many readers will be interested in the "news" section on the site - it tells about novelties of books, facts from the life of writers, about how the book world lives.

Russian fiction

The site originated in 1996, when it was difficult to find free modern science fiction literature on the Internet. No, there was, of course, there, but in scanty quantities and, mostly, at fabulous prices. At that time, there were practically no online libraries designed not for buying books, but for one-time reading. Fortunately, the site's management has collected more than 24,000 files related to the fascinating genre of science fiction on its resource.

Aldebaran

The electronic library Aldebaran offers readers convenient sections in which you can find books of completely different genres. Aldebaran positions itself as the largest collection of literature on the Internet. Before downloading, readers can view excerpts of the book online. The resource offers the ability to download literature to iPhones, iPads and Androids.

Tara Nova

In fact, the site positions itself not so much as a library, but as an archive. The peculiarity of the resource is that it provides a platform for potential publishers. Here you can find both the books themselves and the works of translators. The official site and the collected materials are provided directly by the authors and translators, and therefore you can safely download all the information posted on it, without fear of breaking the law.

Liters

Liters (like Aldebaran) is included in the lists of the largest online e-book library. The resource offers its partnerships to authors and publishers, so the site is useful not only for the reader. The company "Liters" was founded relatively recently (in 2005), but has already managed to establish itself, having received the prestigious Runet prize in 2014. At the moment, the site has about 875,000 books in Russian and foreign languages, among which more than 32,000 books can be downloaded for free. Among other things, Liters presents a database of audiobooks, consisting of 10,000 materials.

10. Library of creativity Leo Tolstoy

A wonderful resource for fans of the great Russian classic. With the joint efforts of volunteers from 49 countries, the site has collected Tolstoy's collected works, numbering 90 volumes. Here you can also find interesting facts from the biography of Lev Nikolaevich. Convenient pointers will help you not to get confused in the wealth of Tolstoy's work. The site's management makes it possible to download books in different formats or read them online. And here you can also find friends with the same interests and have a pleasant time discussing the creations of your favorite writer.

Artifact

Compared to large resources, there are not many books in this library (at the moment about 8,500 texts have been downloaded). But the Artifact offers a collection of many fascinating works by popular authors, for example, Isaac Asimov, Robert Asprin and many others. In addition to fiction, there is a wonderful section "Languages" in which learners of foreign languages \u200b\u200bcan find useful manuals and textbooks.

Bookland

A great resource for reading lovers. The site contains both paid and free materials. In the section "Free Books" you can find fascinating works of classics and contemporaries. The site store offers the opportunity to purchase literature in different languages.

Old Wizard

An interesting project called "Library of the Old Wizard" presents a catalog of free books. Visit the sections of the resource and find many works in the genres of fantasy and science fiction. A prerequisite for downloading is registration on the site. By the way, you can combine business with pleasure: while reading new items on the site, proofread the text, correcting typos. This will help you improve the quality of the free library.

Nestor

A highly specialized library site contains links to download scientific papers. The catalog is divided into two rooms: general and scientific. In the common room there are educational and general educational headings: computing and programming; home economics; musical and pedagogical literature; cooking; medicine and pharmacology; fishing; literature about animals. There are many interesting sections in the scientific hall: sociology; political economy; philosophy, etc. This resource allows you to easily and quickly download zipped files (with text and illustrations from a given book).

Gumer

The library site is a treasure trove of humanitarian literature. Here you will find books on the topic of pedagogy, cultural studies, political science, etc. The category "Fiction" contains an interesting selection of works by Russian and foreign classics. The only drawback of this site is the lack of a "Download" function. However, if you don't want to read online, you can simply copy the text manually. Agree, this is a minor obstacle when you desperately need to get a rare scientific work.

What sites do you use the most? Please share helpful literature resources with us. Good books and easy downloads!

Truly professional people have always been known for their love of literature. Even Joseph Stalin, despite his high position, read at least 300 pages a day. To receive the Stalin Prize for Literature in the USSR was the greatest honor, because the leader himself personally read all the books.

Recently, more and more people are talking about the decline of book culture - Russia has long lost the title of the most reading country in the world. These assumptions are based on data from the book trade, which is indeed in a deplorable state. However, conclusions cannot be drawn from this. People didn't stop reading - they just switched to another medium.

E-books, e-readers, as they are called, allow you to take with you not one book, but an entire library, which is very important if, for example, you want to read The Forsyte Saga and then immediately The Dark Tower. Naturally, there are no storage problems. And with accessibility - the book you are interested in can be obtained immediately, and not go to the bookstore, in which it may well not be. But in order not to rush all over the Internet, it is useful to know the places in which this particular old edition of a very rare book may appear.

and Flibusta (www.flibusta.net). Libraries are similar both in content (there are a lot of books of various kinds) and in design. Each book's page contains an abstract, ratings and reader reviews. Perhaps the only significant difference is that downloading some books on Librusek is paid. However, online reading is always available - on both sites.

Now let's move on to specialized libraries.

Previous sites contain a huge number of books, but with rare exceptions these are books of the XIIX-XXI centuries. If you need the text of "The Prayer of Daniel the Imprisoned", then the Im warden website (www.imwerden.de) will come to the rescue. In addition to Old Russian literature and literature of the 18th - 20th centuries, works of some foreign authors are presented.

For fans of science fiction, the site www.fantasykniga.com will be very useful. This is a relatively new library. A user-friendly interface, the possibility of free downloading, an active increase in the number of books, a beautiful design, finally, can make the library popular in the near future.

Goomer Library

It should be noted the library Gumer (), which contains a selection of scientific works on the humanities. Here you can find books on philology, Orthodoxy, jurisprudence, philosophy, foreign languages, incl. "Exotic" - Japanese or Turkish. This is the most popular scientific portal where you can find something that you cannot find on other sites.

magazines.russ.ru) - the most convenient and complete collection of periodicals. Binders from the early nineties are presented. Here you can find magazines: Arion, Zvezda, Foreign Literature, Continent, New World, etc. That is, “thick” literary magazines are represented.

The library "www.sci-lib.com" offers a selection of scientific books and journals. Areas of knowledge represented: various natural sciences (archeology, astronomy, paleontology, physics, etc.), mathematics, technology, humanities (history, psychology, sociology), society. There is a selection of encyclopedic publications. So, here you can find all the volumes of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia or the Brockhaus and Efron encyclopedia.

To find out better the history of Russia is offered by the Runivers portal (www.runivers.ru). The material is divided into sections: atlases, military history, general history, regimental, etc. There is a collection of historical documents.

Naturally, the number of Runet libraries is huge, but we tried to draw your attention to the most famous and interesting projects.

2. Aldebaran

11. Bookland.com

The Bookland e-book store also offers a collection of free e-books in user-friendly formats in 18 languages.

12. Library club

13. "Russian science fiction"

The bookshelf of the Russian Science Fiction site contains over 10,000 texts by 180 authors.

14. Project Gutenberg

The electronic library "Project Gutenberg" will delight those who like to read in foreign languages. This is more than 46 thousand e-books, the predominant language is English.

15. ThankYou.ru

16. Library of Foreign Literature. Rudomino

Library of Foreign Literature Rudomino has digitized part of her funds. These are mostly rare books.

17. "Bookcase"

The cozy children's library “Bookcase” has digitized many good children's books, but in 2009 it was hacked and lost almost all of its assets. But something has survived. You can read children's works by clicking on the book icon in the drawn cabinet.

18. Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology

The Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology shares its profile books in PDF format on its bookshelf. The sample is assessed by professionals as excellent.

19. Coffee room

"Magazine Hall" is an electronic library of modern literary magazines in Russia. Here you can find the latest issues of the most famous Russian "thick magazines". The database is growing quickly enough, and reading is interesting, because many great works are first published here, and then migrated into separate books.

20. Electronic library of the Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences

At the end of 2015 on the website of the Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences appeared the section "Electronic Library". Now it contains about 400 scanned scientific publications, divided by areas for the convenience of users. These are "Theory of Literature", "Russian Literature", "Literature of the Peoples of Russia and the CIS Countries", "Foreign Literature", "Folkloristics" and others. The library is being replenished, on the site it is possible not to register.

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