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I had high hopes when I saw Jim McGee's pointer to this collection of quality scientific reference material. Having recently read The Next Fifty Years, edited by John Brockman, I've grown more interested in reading the works of scientists who "are writing for, and engaging, their peers in other disciplines" and "attempt to make the latest scientific research understandable within science itself as well as to a wide audience." The Next Fifty Years has 25 great essays along those lines, if you like this sort of thing.
A quick browse through the National Academies Press categories page indicates a number of interesting possibilities, but trying to view any of the titles online quickly squelches any enthusiasm. The books are all presented online as scanned TIFF images -- images that were quite blurry on my 19", 1152x864 monitor screen. I tried a couple of different resolutions to make it better but it didn't help. Looking at any of these for very long will give you a headache.
The books are also presented one page at a time -- similar to what you see in an online book store where the intent is to give you a chance to check a few pages before buying. There are printable PDF files available for every page -- but they are individual, single-page files.
I really thought the NAP listing would be similar to the Open e-Journals in Education project, but I was disappointed. The NAP does some nice things, like provide pointers to similar books, but their intent is clearly to sell the hard copy versions of these papers and to make it as inconvenient as possible for online readers.
After having already paid for this stuff with my tax dollars, I'd like a little more consideration as an online reader.
Online texts from National Academies Press.
Free Science, Engineering and Medical Books Online. I am not lying. The National Academies Press which was created by the National Academies to publish the reports issued by the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Medicine, and the National Research Council, all operating under a charter granted by the Congress of the United States, has more than 2,500 free, searchable, high quality books online. Some random examples: The Genomic Revolution: Unveiling the Unity of Life Strange Matters: Undiscovered Ideas at the Frontiers of Space and Time Who Goes There?: Authentication Through the Lens of Privacy Microbial Threats to Health: Emergence, Detection, and Response [kuro5hin.org]
A useful resource to have handy [McGee's Musings]
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