I've been a fan for several years of the volunteers over at Project Gutenberg. They (and at this point it is they although at some point in time perhaps it'll be "we" if I ever volunteer time for it) have made a real effort to take writings that are considered to be in the "Public Domain" and create electronic versions of them that we can download either as .txt files, or browse via html pages, or in some cases, even posted as audiobooks.
ALL FOR FREE.
So next time you want to read an old book but have no money or time for the library (assuming it had that obscure text in the first place), go on over to gutenberg.org and check it out.
Some examples that I personally have read include Emerson's Essays and various writings by Mark Twain.
There are over 30,000 books available as of now, with over 100,000 available through the partners, affiliates and resources link.
There are some things about this format of reading this is a little awkward. From footnotes and copywrite notices and just plain old "looking at the screen" issues, but if you need to find a quick quote from an old book, this could be a good resource for you.
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