The World Digital Library contains more than 16,000 artifacts for 190 countries – significant primary source materials from around the world.
Each artifact includes a narrated background description, a downloadable image, author, date, type, and location of artifact. This makes the site an excellent resource for research papers.

This site offers growing list of free downloadable ebooks. The majority of titles are from the early 1900s, and in the public domain. But there are also many contemporary books for children and older students.

The categories for children include history, literature and science. For older students, there are a broad range of topics, such as computer programming, photography, drawing, history, math and science.

Some titles are also available in audio format.

The British Library offers a large selection of digitized books and manuscripts. They range from the world’s oldest printed book from AD 868 , China’s Diamond Sutra, to sketches by Leonardo da Vinci, Mozart’s musical diary and the early work of Jane Austen.  Each book includes a summary, and options to read or listen to the text. You can also zoom and rotate the page of a book or manuscript to better view the illustrations.

Elsewhere on the site is a gallery of exhibits that include maps, the Magna Carta, Black Europeans, and many more.

Members of the Screen Actors Guild read from a selection of children’s picture books, using online streaming video.  The actor reads, with video switching between book illustrations and the actor.  For some books, the text displays at the bottom of the video feed throughout the story.
Each book includes a summary and activity guides for parents and teachers.

LibriVox’s website and apps provide public domain audio books for children, teens, and adults. The audio books are recorded by volunteers. Browse the collection by Genre/Subject to see the children’s book categories. As of this writing, these include dozens of titles in fiction, historical, religion, school, and non-fiction.

The LibriVox app is available for Kindle Fire, iPad/iPhone and Android devices.