The Barnes and Noble Nook Reader, Amazon.com’s Kindle, and the Sony Daily Edition e-Reader have become valid options for providing books, magazines, and other printed materials to students in school libraries. The new technology behind modern day e-readers and their paper like reading screens currently makes the actual devices somewhat pricey.

However, the savvy school librarian or teacher can help offset the price of the readers by mining the rich library of free materials that are available for download to the new generation of digital readers. Many of the classic books that are required reading for elementary, junior high, and high school students have public domain versions available for ready download into the e-Reader of choice, and they can be downloaded 100% free of charge.

Free eBooks for the Amazon.com Kindle e-Reader

A quick navigation to the Kindle store section of Amazon allows for an option to view all available Kindle titles. When this option is selected, a drop down menu is available that allows the eBooks to be sorted from price lowest to high which ends up revealing page after page of $0.00 books. Of particular interest to school librarians and teachers will be the reference selections, test prep books, and biography/memoirs of notable persons throughout history.

Free Books for the Sony Daily Edition e-Reader

The Sony Daily Edition e-Reader truly provides a large portion of the world of literature to school students. The public domain books that are available through Google Books can be downloaded to a PC desktop and then placed into Daily Edition. All of these books are free and invaluable. A quick browse through Google Books will bring up familiar favorites and obscure manuscripts that have been archived from university libraries. For students in high school who need multiple source materials for research papers, the Sony Daily Edition e-Reader can be a valuable and near instantaneous method of acquiring facts.

Free Books for the Barnes & Noble Nook e-Reader

Nook has only recently experienced its debut on the consumer market, but it has already made a splash. Along with Nook, Barnes & Noble created a desktop download e-Reader for storage of eBooks and allows “loaning” of books and files to friends through both this download and portable devices which can equate to easy sharing among students. Currently Barnes & Noble offers several free eBooks, including a reference dictionary and classics that are usually required reading in high school. More are sure to come as the device makes a larger impact on the e-Reader market.

All three of the current major e-Readers: Kindle, Sony, and Nook have a variety of free eBooks available for download. Many of these free eBooks are materials any school library can benefit from, and utilizing public domain no-cost versions of classics instead of paying for a contemporary download helps compensate for the price of the actual e-Reader.

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