Open Access Resources: Books

The publishers of large format visual arts books such as exhibition catalogues do not supply ebooks to libraries, so are unlikely to be able to join in with these initiatives.  This includes even relatively large publishers in that area such as Phaidon, Taschen and Thames & Hudson.  

Individual publishers might have relevant initiatives. 

Individual artists/writers may have material on their own websites. For example:

• Wolfgang Tillmans (photographer)
• David Campany (writer on photography)

Some museums have made selected catalogues available.  For example:

• The Guggenheim 
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art
• MOMA (free extracts

The Internet Archive and related Open Library can be good for older material for arts subjects. Some examples include:

• Camera Lucida  (and other works by Barthes)
• Citizens of the 20th century 
• Man Ray Paris Portraits
• Stuart Hall - Representation
• Ways of seeing
• The presentation of self in everyday life
• Regarding the pain of others
• On photography
• Illuminations : women writing on photography from the 1850s to the present
• The Camera viewed : writings on twentieth-century photography
• The language of clothes
• Orientalism

Google Books has extensive previews of some texts submitted by publishers to promote their content, including recent texts.  For example:

• Photography: A Critical Introduction
• Google Books: https://books.google.co.uk/

Project Gutenberg is strictly limited to out of copyright books.  Examples include:

• The Pencil of Nature

There are a few interesting commercial initiatives currently available.  For example:

• Kindle - free extracts of most of academic books available on Kindle (you can read them on the Kindle app, even if you don't have a Kindle device)
• Verso (independent "radical" publisher) - 80% off Verso e-books here (until the end of March)
• Perlego - 14 day free trial period
  Access a large selection of ebooks for £12 per month.  
• Google Play - free extracts, purchase or rental of books
• Apple books - free extracts or purchase
• 1854 Digital (The British Journal of Photography) - Access membership benefits including back-copies of BJP for the next three months for £1.  Use the code TOGETHER during checkout. You can use the discount on any digital membership option; if you choose quarterly Digital Access, you will get all the benefits for £1.

Open Access monographs published by University Presses are often searchable in the DOAB directory and in JSTOR Open. It may also be worth browsing the individual catalogues of the presses. A few suggestions are listed below.

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