This site uses a new imaging technology, which was developed by AT&T: DjVu. This technology compresses any scanned document by five-to-one or even ten-to-one. This makes downloading an image at least five to ten times faster than downloading a PDF file. (It also eats up a lot less disk space on a website.)

DjVu preserves an almost perfect image of the original document, which PDF does not allow. It is perfect for posting books, original newsletters, maps, photos, diaries, and any other historical document. You can print out one page or an entire book.

A book's image that is posted in DjVu has exactly the same number of pages as the original. It has the same pagination, which is important for citations in an academic paper or thesis.

But this technology is not just for reprinting old books. DjVu makes it easier, faster, and more effective to publish new books on-line. Freebooks adds new books every year - not just new postings of old books.

To read the books and the newsletters, you will need a copy of the free DjVu reader. Download the DjVu Plug- in in about two minutes, depending on your modem's speed, by clicking here:

http://www.djvuzone.org/download.html

Once it's on your hard drive, whenever you click on a DjVu link to a book or a newsletter, the DjVu reader will pop up automatically. It works the way Adobe Acrobat's Reader works, only much faster.

We also post the books in HTML, but there are a lot of typographical errors. The pagination doesn't match the original books. You can get free books without DjVu, but they won't have the accuracy of DjVu.