Text: (571) 248-7542
The following databases of ebooks contain current book titles. Each of the titles in these databases can be found in the American University's catalog. 
RAND is a nonprofit public policy research institution and think tank. Founded after World War II with a focus on national security, their portfolio grew starting in the 1960s to include domestic issues such as health, education, sustainability, criminal and civil justice, and development. Full text thousands of reports, articles, and working papers. Covers 1946-present.
On June 30, 2024, the World Bank eLibrary subscription platform was discontinued. Content is available open access on the following platforms:
World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
The World Bank’s official open access repository from which anyone can access its research outputs and knowledge products released since 2000.
Documents and Reports
Access all publicly disclosed project and institutional documents since 1946 made available in compliance with the World Bank’s Access to Information Policy.
World Bank Open Data portal
Access to global development data including World Development Indicators and hundreds of datasets, including embeddable data visualizations.
World Bank Group (WBG) Archives
The institutional memory of the WBG providing public access to its documentary heritage. Digitized materials and engaging discovery tools including Country Historical Profiles.
Access to hundreds of electronic books, introductions to the major works and figures in the areas of literature, philosophy, religion and the classics.
Online version of over 300 volumes of the Cambridge Histories book series published since 1960. Covers the history of the ancient and modern world, literature, language and linguistics, philosophy and religion, political thought, music and theater, science, economic history, and law in America.
The vast majority of books that are free online are published prior to 1923. Their U.S. copyright has expired and they are now in the public domain.
The following databases of ebooks contain older book titles. The advantage to searching each database versus the library's catalog is that one can search full text of every book in each database, not just the book record.
The American Council of Learned Societies Humanities E-Book Collection contains 5,400 scholarly books from 250 publishers in the subject areas of anthropology, area studies, international history, literature, philosophy, political science, and women's studies.
This primary source collection contains digitized images of nearly every extant book, pamphlet, and broadside published in America from 1639 to 1819. Series I is based on a definitive work called the American Bibliography by Charles Evans and covers 1639-1800. Series II, based on the authoritative bibliography by Ralph R. Shaw and Richard H. Shoemaker, covers 1801-1819.
A collection of over 125,000 titles, from the first book published in English, through 1700. Disciplines covered include literature, history, philosophy, theology, music, and the sciences.
Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) features the digitized format of 150,000 printed works -- nearly every significant English-language and foreign-language title printed in the United Kingdom, along with thousands of important works from the Americas.
Digitized images of 22,000 British and American legal treatises from 1800 to 1926. They include books, casebooks, practice books, pamphlets, letters, speeches, essays and other works about the making of law, but not the transcript of actual laws or actual cases.
Images from 61,000 works of literature on economics and business published from 1450-1945.
Part I, Goldsmith-Kress Collection 1450-1850; Part II, 1851-1914; Part III, 1890-1945; Part IV, 1800-1980.
