We’re using Raindrop.io, a social bookmarking site, to share links to individual full-text works. But we’re also sharing our favorite places to look for Buffalo in pre-computer online books & periodicals. Please understand that we do not scan or upload books. We find them online where others have digitized them. Then we collect and organize the links via Raindrop.
 | Raindrop has links to a thousand+ open access, nonfiction Buffalo & Erie County-related books, pamphlets, catalogs, dissertations, theses, studies, yearbooks, diaries & periodicals that we found online. Some general Western NY works are included. We are still adding to it. |
 | We pretty much live at Google Books. In 2004, they signed agreements with major libraries to mass digitize books & periodicals. There are four levels of access: full text [the entire book]; excerpt [some pages]; snippet [a sentence or two]; and no text [a placeholder for if they do someday digitize the book]. |
 | HathiTrust was created by a consortium of academic libraries to digitize their books & periodicals. Everything is full text, with lots of public domain material. You must belong to a member institution to read & download works that are still protected by copyright, though. |
 | Internet Archive has full-text public domain books you can download, plus an e-book lending program. Anyone may upload works to Internet Archive. |
 | Gutenberg Project was the first online book site. Everything here is full-text and public domain. |
 | Lastly, here’s an online book search engine built by our colleagues at the University at Buffalo that simultaneously searches the above sites and a few more. |
