It wasn't so long ago that living room bookshelves bordering fireplaces were filled with new books. Some were from subscription services, like the thin Time-Life series, a set of encyclopedias, Reader's Digest, and leather-bound classics that arrived monthly to adorn our shelves with classy bindings. Sadly, over time, these largely unread works found their way to old bookstores or worse, in spite of the high cost of initial purchase. They were simply too unwieldy to carry from one place to another.

Today, books are no longer part of the furniture for most of us. However, a significant collection of these packets of information and entertainment can be assembled now that so many are available in digital format, many of which are absolutely free. Storage of these texts is simply a process of copying them onto a thumb drive, or better yet, a micro SSD card the size of a fingernail.

One motivation to accumulate this vast and incredible library, aside from that pesky collector instinct is to, well, protect this 2,000 years of mankind's data...to be our own historical depository. No matter if the internet suffers a hiccup, a collapse, or special interest screws tighten, this library is available offline for expanding minds.

This writer has been collecting eBooks, eLectures, eMagazines, and movies over the last 20 years through free sources, such as gutenberg.org, archive.org, and even scanning books from my own collection. Virtually anyone these days can assemble the equivalent of a small public library on this tiny chip, in very little time. To keep track, one may want to start a spreadsheet documenting their accumulation. (I also use the Dewey Decimal System used by libraries worldwide to organize what is where.)

To help those of you just getting started in the world of book collecting, I've included links below to 40 texts on various topics, all available for free on archive.org. I can only warn you that once you get started, it's difficult to stop!

Continue to explore the web for the words from civilizations past and present. It's an important venture--and a joy to read from on quiet afternoons.