Find Books

The Bookshare™ library contains tens of thousands of accessible books and continues to grow rapidly. Anyone can search for books in the library. However, only Members can download copyrighted books. All freely distributable titles (e.g. public domain or Creative Commons licensed) can be downloaded by anyone, with or without a membership. Learn more about membership or log in (at the top of any page).

There are multiple ways to use the Bookshare library:

Search for Books

Quick Search

For a streamlined search page that works well with screen readers, log in to Bookshare and click Quick Search in the blue bar at the top of the page. This page has several advantages:

  • There is no top navigation or header to skip over to reach the content.
  • Search results are displayed in a simple Google-like format that offers quick access to download links and book information.
  • You can bookmark this page and come back to it whenever you want to find a book quickly.

Standard Search

For standard search, just type a title, author or ISBN in the search field at the top of any page.

Advanced Search

If you want more choices, select Advanced Search. In addition to searching by Title, Author or ISBN, you can also search by:

  • Language: English, Spanish
    (There are books in other languages, but they are not searchable by language at this time—Dutch, French, German, Italian, Portuguese.)
  • Category: biographies, nonfiction, poetry, textbooks, etc.
  • Book type: copyrighted books, freely distributable books, etc.

  • Book Quality: “Publisher Quality” or “Excellent”

    Tip: The majority of Bookshare books are of excellent quality or above. There are some additional books that are of good quality. To include these books, select “Good or above” in Book Quality field. Search Results (Standard and Advanced Searches)

Search Results (Standard and Advanced Searches)

The search results page lists the authors, titles and copyright dates of the books that match your criteria. You can display the titles as a table or as a list and sort by title or author. You can also narrow your search with the “Relevant Authors” field, which displays the authors who appear most often in the results.

Each title has a link for downloading the book. Learn more about downloading. If you are logged in as a Member, these links appear for all books. If you are not logged in, only freely distributable titles (e.g. public domain or Creative Commons licensed) have a download link. Log in (at the top of this page) or learn more about membership.

Tips for Searching

  • In the Search box at the top of each page, you can enter multiple search terms to find all Titles and Authors that contain ANY of those terms. For example: “Bruce Lincoln” returns all Authors and Titles containing either “Bruce” or “Lincoln” or both.
  • In the Advanced Search page, you can enter multiple terms to find just the books that contain ALL of the search terms and criteria. For example: entering “Wuthering” in the Title field and “Bronte” in the Author field will return “Wuthering Heights” by Emily Bronte.
  • Searching for an author or title returns an exact match, unless you use a wildcard character (*) to broaden your search results. For example:
    • “king” returns “king”, not “peking” or “kingsley”
    • “*king” returns “peking”
    • “king*” returns “kingsley”
    • “*king*” returns both “peking” and “kingsley”
  • Common articles (“a”, “an”, “of”, “the”, “be”, “is”) are not searched as they return too many results.
  • Some search results may include listings for books (labeled as “Remote Books”), that are not part of Bookshare’s online library but instead are available from other providers. The book information page includes a link for contacting the book provider.

Browse Collections

If you just want to look through the Bookshare library, you can browse by:

Bookshare is continually adding new Special Collections, so check back often. Here are a few of the more popular collections:

Request a Book

If you don’t find what you are looking for in the Bookshare library, you can always request a book:

  • For K-12 textbooks: Search the Bookshare library first. If you don’t find the textbook, you can download the Quick Guide to Requesting a NIMAC Textbook through Bookshare. Bookshare is happy to assist you in obtaining textbooks through the National Instructional Materials Accessibility Center (NIMAC).

    NIMAC-sourced titles are only available to U.S. K-12 public schools for students who are Chafee-qualified and have an Individualized Education Plan (IEP).
  • For other K-12 school books (other than textbooks): Send a request to Bookshare’s School Book Team. Please be sure to include the following information if you can:
    • Book Title
    • Author
    • ISBN number (this will speed things up a lot)
    • The reason you need the book
    • The grade you are currently teaching or attending in school or college.
    While Bookshare tries to process all student and teacher book requests, please understand that in some circumstances the requested material may not be available or suitable for Bookshare’s scanning processes. The Bookshare team will reply to your email within three business days, so you know the status of your request.
  • For general reading books: Visit the Wish List,. The fastest way to add these books to the Bookshare library is to volunteer and scan them in. Learn more about volunteering.

Tip: Teachers and educators, please send in your reading list. Bookshare will scan any state or school district recommended reading lists.