Where to go when Z library’s down

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Z library alternatives are out there, if you know where to look.

Last month, Z library returned after a long game of legal cat and mouse. The shadow library battled domain seizures and, in a bid to make the site as accessible as possible, is now launching a dedicated desktop application.

However, lost domain names sent traffic elsewhere. Inevitably, other sites offering free access to books cropped up – though without the same track-record as Z library. Let’s take a look at some of the alternatives out there.

PDF Drive

The site has around 80 million ebooks, all of which are available as PDFs, as well as other formats. New files and books are uploaded every day, so there’s extensive choice. PDF Drive doesn’t require any personal information, and what information the site does collect is strictly encrypted.

PDF Drive technically doesn’t ‘create’ the content it provides – it’s more like a search engine or proxy, with resources from across the web stored on its servers. As such, it’s legal to use.

The PDF Drie catalogue isn’t as extensive Z library’s, although textbooks and essays are available, making PDF Drive a useful alternative for students. There are two membership tiers, meaning that the best experience is only offered to those willing to pay. Accessing the site for free means popup ads and limited cloud storage.

Library Genesis

Library Genesis is a platform with more than two million books on offer, including rare and out of print titles. Downloads from the site are very unlikely to contain malware, and it’s also more secure than most torrenting sites.

LibGen is totally free, but might be too similar to Z library for its own good: in 2015 it was involved in a legal case, and the website and its proxies are banned the US, UK and Germany. That hasn’t stopped it yet, but as we’ve seen with Z library, there are only so many loopholes, and the resource might not always be there.

refseek

For academics, refseek offers more than a billion sources of academic papers for researchers to use. You’re not going to discover a new John le Carré novel, but the platform searches more than one billion documents, including web pages, books, encyclopaedias, journals, and newspapers for study.

This is a good alternative for students who might not want to risk reliance on Z library as, like PDF Drive, refseek functions as a search tool, rather than providing content itself. Some reviews say that it omits some sources, so it’s not exhaustive, but it’s a good start.

WorldCat

WorldCat is a union catalogue that itemizes the content of over 20,000 global libraries. It’s operated by OCLC and contains over 540 million bibliographic records in 483 languages. Everything is above board here, and rather than providing online versions, WorldCat directs you to an IRL library where you can borrow the resource.

The site certainly simplifies searching local libraries. However, for people in remote areas – who rely on Z library because of a lack of (well-stocked) libraries nearby – it won’t fill the shadow library’s boots.

 

Springer Link and Bioline

Assuming that the majority of Z library users are accessing textbooks via the shadow library, Springer Link could provide a good alternative. With over 10 million scientific documents to browse, the publisher-specific database provides free access to peer-reviewed books, journals and articles.

Similarly, Bioline is a not-for-profit scholarly publishing cooperative that gives open access to research journals published in developing countries with the goal of reducing the South to North knowledge gap. Platforming peer-reviewed bioscience journals from countries including Egypt, Ghana, Venezuela and Iran, Bioline is another way to find research papers for free online.

RePEc

Sponsored by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, RePEc (Research Papers in Economics) is a collection of nearly 4 million publications from volunteers across 102 countries. The site is an effort to enhance the dissemination of research in economics.

Interestingly, the site advertises how providers and publishers can contribute their work to the site; the implication being that doing so doesn’t just benefit readers. Also, obviously, if research papers and essays are uploaded by their authors there’s no illegality going on (assuming they retain copyright), and the site is unlikely to disappear overnight.

Science.gov

Provided by the very people fighting so hard to take Z library down (and keep it down!), Science.gov is a US government search engine for more than 2200 scientific sites. It searches over 60 databases to give access to more than 200 million pages of federal science information. Naturally, this is all above board and, besides providing information, has little in common with Z library.

Internet Archive

As far as Z library alternatives go, the Internet Archive is a favorite. The non-profit library offers millions of free books that users “borrow” for a limited amount of time. It’s also got movies, software, music, and more. Especially fun is the Wayback machine that lets users search the history of over 818 billion web pages on the internet.

From the website:

“Most societies place importance on preserving artifacts of their culture and heritage. Without such artifacts, civilization has no memory and no mechanism to learn from its successes and failures. Our culture now produces more and more artifacts in digital form. The Archive’s mission is to help preserve those artifacts and create an internet library for researchers, historians, and scholars.”

The free digital library was founded by free information advocate Brewster Kahle and the Internet Archive is also an activist organization that advocates for a free and open internet.

This beacon of e-libraries has had its own share of legal difficulties. In March 2020, when schools and brick-and-mortar libraries had to close, the Internet Archive launched the National Emergency Library that allowed users to borrow books without having to join a waitlist.

In a ruling made public at the end of March 2023, the site was found to have infringed the rights of Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, Penguin Random House and John Wiley & Sons. The four publishers sued the Internet Archive a few months after the launch of the National Emergency Library for “willful mass copyright infringement.”

Anna’s Archive

Anna’s Archive calls itsef the world’s largest open-source open-data library and amalgamates resources from Sci-Hub, Library Genesis, Z library and more. The site has two objectives: preservation – backing up humanity’s culture and knowledge – and access – making this knowledge and culture available to anyone in the world.

Z library alterntives: the verdict

So, Z library alternatives are out there, but the closer you get to a replica, the more likely it is that it’ll face the same problems that the shadow library has. There are ways to access free literature online, and many of them are safe to use, but it’s always worth checking that a site is safe before you venture onto it.

Since the site revealed plans to launch a desktop application, Z library has managed to stay out of the news. We wouldn’t advocate piracy, but in cases like the National Emergency Library by the Internet Archive, might the same immunity granted to Robin Hood apply?

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