I have been following Kevin Savetz on Twitter for ages. Periodically he announces a new site in his “Free Printable” group and I think, “Oh, I should mention that in ResearchBuzz,” and promptly forget about it. Finally I have a little extra time so I can cover all 45+ of his sites at one time.

Free Printable is available at http://www.freeprintable.net/. The site name sounds a bit odd but actually it’s just a network of about 49 sites that offer free printable — stuff. Like what? There’s free printable things for business, like business cards, time sheets, cash receipts, and resume templates. (The ones I saw were available in Microsoft Word, and sometimes PDF versions. The ones I downloaded in Word opened just fine in OpenOffice Word Processor.)

There are also more general templates, like 2009 and 2010 calendars, greeting cards, maps, and even tourney brackets. (Not just printable, but otherwise useful, is a simple little tool for easily making pie charts.) Home printables include chore charts, family tree templates, gift tags, and play money (?!) And finally, kids get their own small section with printable dot-to-dots and coloring pages in different themes.

I didn’t have to register to download anything or provide an e-mail address — just agree to the terms of service. The site does offer e-mailed updates, and it does sell customizable versions of some of its templates, and/or sets, but it isn’t obnoxious about it. I’m going to find this site useful when I need those bits of paper that sometimes end up part of research — family tree templates, calendars, and occasionally graph paper. (I would love to be doing the kind of research that makes me need some extra Yahtzee score cards…)