SourceLibrary
Hacker ApprovedRanked 6 of 13 ebook libraries by recommenders
A free, open source collection of historical texts, including thousands of Renaissance books, with a research agent for answering questions about them. Some texts are machine translated.
A free, open source collection of historical texts, including thousands of Renaissance books, with a research agent for answering questions about them. Some texts are machine translated.
11 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 11
- criticize it
- 0
- approval share
- 100%
Recommended in 4 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 11 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- Nobody criticizes itNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 4 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Vast collection of beautiful texts
“It is a vast and beautiful collection that I spent hours checking out”
Comment from 13 Jul 2026 in “Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (July 2026)” “This is an amazing collection.”
Comment from 25 Sep 2026 in “Using LLMs to trace alchemical knowledge and decode 17th century letters” Useful for original historical research
“The use case is doing original historical research on your phone instead of social media.”
Comment from 10 Oct 2026 in “Pointing AI at archives found a forgotten meteorite, lost rhinos, and more” “this was really designed to support humanists”
Comment from 4 Jul 2026 in “Google Books (or similar) all book scans – $200k bounty” Relevant, poignant research agent answers
“It’s a pretty powerful research agent!”
Comment from 13 Jul 2026 in “Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (July 2026)” “the answers are relevant and poignant”
Comment from 5 Jul 2026 in “Google Books (or similar) all book scans – $200k bounty”
Other ebook libraries people recommend
The four most recommended other ebook libraries, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Anna's Archive | 134 | 57 | 70% | 12 | — | Approved |
| Project Gutenberg | 76 | 8 | 90% | 11 | — | Approved |
| Standard Ebooks | 34 | 8 | 81% | 9 | — | Approved |
| Library Genesis | 15 | 2 | 88% | 7 | — | Approved |
| SourceLibraryThis page | 11 | 0 | 100% | 4 | — | Approved |
What people said
13 of the 17 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“The use case is doing original historical research on your phone instead of social media.”
“This is a brilliant idea and I've had the idea for gathering the worlds spiritual texts in a similar fashion.”
“Absolutely fascinated by it, both the contents, as well as getting the UI right.”
“This is an amazing collection.”
“Really like your site and it's queued to send in my newsletter in the morning!”
“SourceLibrary is totally free and open source.”
“a collection of over 5,000 books from the renaissance that have never been translated before”
“tons of machine translation of beautiful texts”
“It is a vast and beautiful collection that I spent hours checking out”
“It’s a pretty powerful research agent!”
“All that said, this is a wonderful resource.”
“the answers are relevant and poignant”
“this was really designed to support humanists”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.