Ebooks offer two major benefits to the academic researcher:  the ease of accessing the texts themselves, and the ability to keyword search within the texts. 

On the web:

Project Gutenberg.  Project Gutenberg is a repository of more than 33,000 texts on a variety of subjects.  Most of the books are in the public domain because their copyright has expired; the number of current texts in this repository is relatively small.

Google Books. Working in partnership with several libraries, Google has digitized millions of in-copyright and out of copyright books.  Your access to the full text of the content will vary according to copyright law: some are available in full-text, some provide substantial preview views, and some provide only snippet (sentence-length) views.  Where there isn't full-text, request the book through OSU Libraries Interlibrary Loan service (ILL) and we will either borrow the book from another library or purchase it. Note: this is a free service and we aim to get the book to you in the most expedient way possible. Also, if this is your first time using ILL you will be asked to register.