Borrowing Books
Most of the books on Century Past that were published since 1925 are in copyright and must be ‘borrowed’ for a limited period of time from Internet Archive. When you click on such a book, it opens on the Internet Archive site. Here is their page that explains how borrowing and downloading books works.
When you borrow a book from Internet Archive for 14 days you have the option to download it, normally in Adobe pdf. Often you are also given a choice of downloading it in the epub format. epub works better than pdf on a phone.
Downloading Books to a Phone
For downloading those books to your phone that you borrow for 14 days, I suggest that you NOT take Internet Archive’s recommendation to install the Adobe Digital Editions or Aldiko mobile apps. The Digital Editions app performs poorly, and the current version of Aldiko is not designed for the type of DRM control used by Internet Archive. I understand the Bluefire app they recommend will work on iOS phones, although there is a small charge.
While there are many book reading apps for phones, to download borrowed books from the Internet Archive you need one that works together with the Adobe DRM system for controlled book lending. I have found only one app that works on both Android and iOS; the PocketBook Reader app. PocketBook Reader’s instructions and links for loading the apps are here, in the paragraphs that begin with ‘Android Device‘ and ‘iOS Device‘.
Before you install the app, you need an Adobe ID, which you can get here.
PocketBook Reader Cloud
If you choose to use the PocketBook Reader, you may want their cloud service. It allows users to store their books and to switch between devices while reading the same book. You’ll need to first create an account at the PocketBook online book store. Then use the same login you created for the store to access PocketBook Cloud. Find out more about PocketBook Cloud here. Create an account here.
After the PocketBook Cloud is activated, an ID with the word pbsync and numbers will be created automatically. Its an Adobe ID that should enable saving Internet Archive books to the cloud.