If you’re interested in saving time and money, and having research and reading outlets available at your convenience no matter where you are, or what time it is, give online libraries a shot. Whether you’re looking for a good novel to read, wanting an audio book for that road trip you’re taking, or researching your thesis, the following five sites will provide you plenty of options for each.

Also, be sure to check and see if your local library system is online. If they are, you may be able to access parts of their collection, such as e-books, automobile manuals, and magazine articles, over the internet. Many libraries also allow you to place a hold on a book, download videos, music, and audio books, and chat with a librarian.

Most of these services are available for free, though a few sites do charge a subscription fee—usually a small price to pay for having unlimited, 24/7 access to quality, trustworthy information and material.

Bartleby
Bartleby gives you free access to literature, non-fiction, and reference materials.

The Reference section includes: encyclopedias, dictionaries, thesaurus’, quotations’, and English usage manuals.

In Verse, find: anthologies and volumes of poetry including greats such as Robert Frost and Walt Whitman.

Fiction brings you: anthologies and volumes of classic literature from favorites such as Hans Christian Andersen, Agatha Christie, Charles Dickens, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Homer, Sinclair Lewis, Herman Melville, Edgar Allan Poe, William Shakespeare, and many more.

Non-Fiction includes: essays, inaugural addresses, historical document, autobiographies, and more.

Library Spot
Library Spot is packed with useful information. It’s a true virtual library and resource center. Published by Northwestern University/Evanston Research Park, Library Spot uses an editorial team to review and hand-select the highest quality sites on the web. They’ve won over 30 awards and honors for bringing users exceptional quality and content—for free!

Among the many resources you can find at Library Spot are:

Libraries, including public libraries, academic libraries, and even Presidential.

A Reading Room full of books, newspapers, journals, and more.

A Reference Desk which gives you access to: almanacs, thesaurus’, calculators, calendars, dictionaries, directories, encyclopedias, maps, public records, quotations, statistics, white and yellow pages, and whole lot more.

Questia
Offering over 70,000 full text books, and 2 million newspaper, magazine, and journal articles in the humanities and social sciences, this is the perfect resource for students, teachers, or professionals in those fields. For unlimited use of the entire collection and the ability to read any work cover to cover, it will cost you $19.95 a month. For access to only one collection, you can get away with spending $9.95 a month. Questia also offers a free 72 hour trial service. The subscription also comes with a wide range of note-taking and writing tools, including tools to write notes in the margins, highlight passages, create footnotes and bibliographies, and the ability to hyperlink. The service is available, with staff, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Classic Book Library
At Classic Book Library, you can read dozens of your favorite classics online for free. From A Tale of Two Cities to Sense and Sensibility, The Wizard of Oz, and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, there’s plenty of treasured literature for you to choose from. Categories include: Historical Fiction, Romance, Children’s Literature, History, Science Fiction, Science, and Mystery. Each chapter is divided into separate pages, and the book includes a table of contents for easy bookmarking.

Books Free
Books Free operates differently from other online libraries. It’s the Netflix of the literary world. You visit the website, check-out the paperbacks, CDs, or audio books you want, and they deliver your choices directly to your house. You will pay for the service, however shipping is free. Monthly plans start at $29.49 for unlimited check-outs of any materials. If you’re only interested in audio discs and books, plans start at $22.49 a month. Those of you only wanting to check-out paperbacks can get a plan as low as $9.99 a month. Books Free also offers combo packages and a’ la carte rentals. There are no due dates, and Books Free carries over 160,000 titles for you to choose from.

The fiction selection includes: action, horror, mystery, fantasy, comics, romance, science fiction, popular, and many sub-genres.

In non-fiction, select from biographies, business, cooking, health, history, philosophy, religion, travel, and more.

Want to track your spending habits, bank accounts, credit cards, and investments all in one place? Looking for ways to save money, reduce account fees, lower interest rates, and maximize returns on investments? Mint.com can help you do all of those things. Their online service is secure, free, takes five minutes to set up, and automatically connects to over 5,000 U.S. financial institutions that update daily. Just by logging into your Mint account, which is accessible from anywhere, you can get an up-to-date, accurate view of your financial status. If you don’t like what you see, use Mint to:

• Categorize your expenses
• Graph your expenses
• Budget
• Find ways to save
• Uncover hidden fees
• Reduce your debt

and more. Mint has received positive reviews from PCWorld, PC Magazine, and The Wall Street Journal. They are VeriSign Secured, Truste Certified for privacy, and McAfee tested daily, so you know your information is safe and protected. Give them a try, and see what they can do to better your financial situation.

Mint.com

Need to fill out a PDF form for work, school, or other important purpose? Most PDF forms received online are not editable. The only way to fill them in is to print the pages and handwrite the information it calls for. Not exactly professional looking, is it? By subscribing to PDF filler, however, you can create exceptional looking PDF forms that will help you stand out. Though PDF filler does charge a small fee, for only $9.99, you can get access for 30 days, in which time you can upload, edit, print, email, fax, and export as many forms as you want, as many times as you like. A one year subscription costs $69.99, which amounts to a 40% discount. PDF filler is web-based, so you don’t have to download any software, and it supports any browser. So, take that extra step and get ahead of the crowd.

PDF filler

Think you know which Presidential candidate most closely matches your opinions on all of the important issues? You might be surprised. Let Glassbooth.org help you find out.

Glassbooth is a website that uses a simple points system to help you match your opinions and values with those of the candidates. You start out by picking which issues you’re most passionate about. Among your choices are: Taxes & Budget, Civil Liberties and Domestic Security, Iraq and Foreign Policy, Crime and Punishment, Trade and Economics, Environment and Energy, Health Care, Education, and more. Say you’re most concerned about Trade and Economics. You can give that category as many points as you wish, but be aware, you only start out with twenty points total. Not so concerned about Immigration? Don’t rank it. Once you’re done doling out points, take the quiz.

During the quiz, you’ll be asked approximately twenty questions. You choose whether you strongly oppose, strongly support, or only feel moderately about the issue. You may also skip the question. Once you’re done taking the quiz, Glassbooth will tell you which candidate(s) most closely matches your answers and why. See how the candidates voted on certain issues, and read articles about their stances and proposed policies. Don’t see the candidate you had planned to vote for as a match? Hit “See Other Candidate” and select the person you had chosen to see how they match up.

Don’t make a mistake at the polls. Visit Glassbooth and in only a few minutes you can either confirm your choice, or find the real candidate that’s right for you.

Go to Glassbooth

Are you looking for an adventurous road trip across the United States, a ski trip to Colorado, or a family-oriented vacation to the beach? You can plan all of those vacations and more with Trip Cart. Trip Cart is a one-stop online travel guide that allows you to plan every aspect of your specialized vacation from one convenient place. Think of it as your online travel agent—without the extra fees.

While other travel sites allow you to book flights, make hotel reservations, and rent cars, Trip Cart takes trip planning several steps further. Though you can do all of this from Trip Cart, booking isn’t the main emphasis of the site. With Trip Cart, you can customize your vacation and build an itinerary based on the sites and activities that are unique to you and your traveling companions. If you want to tour wineries or visit historical homes in Savannah, Georgia, use Trip Cart’s visually appealing symbols to the right of the map to build your vacation. Add your activities to your itinerary, and from there, you can schedule your day-to-day activities, add directions, phone numbers, confirmation numbers, and other notes. You can even email the itinerary to your traveling companions.

Take a tour of Trip Cart and see how easy it is to plan a trip that’s perfect for you.

Trip Cart

Do you own or use more than one computer? Maybe a desktop at home, a computer at work, and a laptop when you’re on the road? If so, you know how frustrating it can be to not have the software you need to edit your photos on the computer you’re using. You don’t, after all, want to spend over $700 to equip each one with editing software. Don’t get stuck without image editing capabilities, try a web-based image editor instead.

Web-based image editors are easy to use. Upload the photograph you wish to edit, make the changes you want, and save everything right there, online. In most cases there is nothing to download, and no cost to the user. The six web-based image editors below were selected by Six Revisions for having exceptional capabilities that rival desktop applications such as Photoshop. Check them out.

Phoenix

Pixlr

Splashup

Pixer.us

FotoFlexer

Sumo Paint

Read what Six Revisions has to say about each image editor at “6 Exceptional Web-based Image Editors.”

In addition to its popular cell phone plan ratings service, BillShrink.com is now taking a closer look at credit cards. If you pay high interest rates, an annual fee, or are looking to maximize the rewards credit card companies are offering, you don’t want to miss this simple 3 step process. Enter your data in the required fields, and BillShrink.com analyzes your current rates, fees, and the fine print, to calculate your total cost for using that particular card. If there are better cards out there, they’ll let you know. Get started today, and find yourself a credit card that will save you money.

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Read about Finding the Best Cell Phone Plan

If you like to browse magazines, but don’t want to spend the money to subscribe to all of your favorites, or have the print editions pile up around the house, consider subscribing to Coverleaf, a free digital magazine service. Coverleaf allows you to browse the full content of its participating magazines, save clips in a handy folder, and search topics or key words.

Although their magazine selection is currently limited, they are adding new digital editions frequently, and they have at least one magazine each in the categories of Business and Finance, Cooking and Food, Health and Fitness, Hobby, Professional and Technology, and Sports and Adventure, among others. Better Homes and Gardens, Fitness, Ladies Home Journal and Sporting News Today are all available through a Coverleaf subscription.

This service is great for the casual reader or the researcher, and with no registration or subscription fee, there’s no reason not to sign-up. It’s free education and entertainment!

Coverleaf

Have you ever wondered what’s really in the deodorant or dishwasher detergent you’re using? Do they contain harsh chemicals? Are they manufactured in a country known for using unsafe production practices and labor standards? If you want to know how the products you use impact your health, the environment, and the community in which they are manufactured, Good Guide can help. They claim to be “the world’s largest and most reliable source of information on…the products in your home.” With a database containing over 60,000 personal and household care products, you can search for the safest, healthiest, and greenest goods on the market. Find a moisturizer that doesn’t contain BHA, an immune system toxin and possible carcinogen, or eye drops that don’t contain boric acid. If you want to buy products from companies that have good environmental practices, or give their employees benefits, you can find that information, too. You can also get recommendations, create a shopping list, view top-rated products, and get information on recalls.

Good Guide uses a network of academic institutions, government and non-governmental organizations, and private research firms to collect data on “chemical ingredients, products, brands, factories, companies, industrial sectors, and even countries.” The team then converts that information into ratings for the consumer.

Though the site is still in beta form, it is easy to use, and the amount of information currently available is enough to help you make smarter, safer decisions about the products you use.

Visit the Good Guide website

With so many cell phone plans and providers, how do you know if you’re getting the best contract, for the best price? BillShrink.com is a free service that instantly analyzes your current cell phone plan and compares it to every other plan available from all the major wireless carriers. Finding the right option for you is as easy as visiting the BillShrink.com website, and answering seven quick questions. If you already have the best plan available, BillShrink will tell you. If not, the site will present you with a list of viable options. BillShrink.com is accredited by the Better Business Bureau, and is McAfee, VeriSign, and TRUSTe secure, so head over today and make sure you’re getting the best deal for you.

BillShrink.com