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Questia Media has released a library of over 5,000 books for free access on its Web site. You can get started browsing at http://www.questia.com/publicdomainindex .

You can look at the top ten books (which include Tarzan, Freud, and Huckleberry Finn) or browse the collection alphabetically (by title or author.) Listings include title, author, publisher, and publication date (I guess these are all public domain books.) Click on a book and you’ll get a screen that looks something like Google Reader (make sure you have JavaScript enabled.)

You can page through, read the text, and search, but if you want to do things like highlight pages, you’ll need a Questia account. Despite the fact that access to these books is free, Questia itself is not. (There is a free trial available but it’s a trial.)

Since school is starting, this would be a quick place to find and search the classics if you’ve got a paper to do. Of course you’ve also got Project Gutenberg…

I had not realized how much detail was being put in most directory listings until I came across a site that provides about 8,000 links, but very little detail. Curtain Rising, at http://www.curtainrising.com/ , lists theatres from all over the world but it’s just a link to the theatre’s site, no additional detail that I can see.

Why am I mentioning them here then? Gravity — they have so dang MANY listings. From the front page of the site you can specify a geographical area and then get sublistings for that area. Texas had dozens and dozens of theatres listed, with apparently defunct theatres grayed and line’d out.

But the lists are just link lists, with no description. Even a basic bit of information in a mouseover would be good. Or a screenshot. SOMETHING.

Oh, there’s also material here besides lists of theatres. There’s also lists of Shakespeare festivals, sites, and texts. (These last two actually have nice descriptions to go with the links.) There’s a list of shows, but it doesn’t link back to the theatres and I can’t tell how complete it is. And there’s some pointers to forums and general theatreish stuff.

I like the site’s design and the sheer number of listings — if only for a little… more… information!

When I first saw the press release about the new Mildred Wirt Benson archive, I had one reaction. “The Secret of the Old Clock.” The first Nancy Drew novel. Man, I must have read that book twenty times when I was a kid.

Mildred Wirt Benson wrote the first Nancy Drew novel in 1930 under the pseudonym Carolyn Keene, and wrote nearly two dozen of the series. Benson donated her personal papers to the University of Iowa Women’s archives, starting in 1992 until her death in 2002. These papers, plus other materials, make up the new Mildred Wirt Benson collection available at http://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/mwb .

From the front page you can browse all the items in the collection or view a timeline, but I recommend looking at the sample categories at the bottom of the page, including biographical information, photographs, and short stories. (Read the autobiographical sketch if you get a chance. I have great respect for people who can write fiction to start with — but to write so much of it so quickly! — you’d think she was Georges Simenon.

If you read any of the Nancy Drew books as a kid, the cover gallery will take you back, as it contains sixty covers from not only the Drew series but a variety of other youth series as well. Included here are covers from the “Dan Carter” “Dot and Dash” and “Honey Bunch” series. The second and third pages of covers have more Nancy Drew covers. A lot of these look familiar! When you click on the cover you’ll also get the opportunity to look at the other parts of the book — table of contents, endpapers, flyleaf, title page — everything but the actual content.

Fascinating to get a glimpse into one of the first writers behind Nancy Drew. Very interesting stuff!

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