Feel like browsing in the bookstacks? But not quite ready for a trip to campus? Try a visit to the Internet Archive — www.archive.org. Then click on texts. There are over a million books to browse; you’ll find standard formats such as PDF but also nostalgic formats such as the flip book. You’ll find almost 200,000 volumes from Canadian libraries. One of my favorites is an early volume (1905) of Canadian Nurse. And there are 30,000 amazing volumes from the Biodiversity Heritage Library Project. This project is a joint effort of natural history museum libraries, botanical garden libraries, and research institutions such as Harvard and Woods Hole. Most volumes are pre-1923. The book pictured below on whale-fishery was published in 1820.
Happy browsing!