March 2012
An Introduction to Academic E-Books
Tell us what you think: Take our short opinion poll about e-books: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/CVZ66TF.
Collins Library provides University of Puget Sound users access to 1000’s of full-text e-books from a number of academic publishers. They can be viewed online, or downloaded for reading on-the-go using selected mobile devices and tablets, like the iPad. We’ve created an easy how-to Guide to e-books, and have highlighted a few select points below.
How can I discover which e-books we have access to? The easiest way to find e-books available through the Collins Memorial Library is through our catalog, Puget Sound WorldCat. Our Guide to e-books provides step-by-step instructions on searching for e-books.
What type of e-books does the Library have? We currently provide access to a variety of e-books from academic monographs to reference resources. These are a few of our main e-book providers.
EBL: EBL (Ebook Library) offers tens of thousands of individual e-books spanning a wide range of academic and professional subject areas. You can browse by categories such as Fine Arts, Social Sciences, or Business and Management, then limit by year or language. Or search for a specific title. This is our most up-to-date e-book collection and one that is available as a result of our Orbis Cascade Alliance collaboration.
EBSCO E-Books: There are a significant number of e-books available through the EBSCOhost platform, however, because Collins Library does not purchase new e-books from EBSCO, most of these e-books are older. To download e-books you will need to create a “My EBSCOhost” account.
Gale Virtual Reference Library: Provides full text access to over 100 encyclopedias and other electronic reference sources from a variety of publishers.
Oxford Reference Online: Contains the complete texts of over 200 Oxford companions, encyclopedias, dictionaries and other reference titles which, beyond text articles, include images, maps, timelines, bibliographies, photographs and much more.
Sage Reference Online: A collection of the electronic versions of many of Sage’s print encyclopedias and handbooks including, the Encyclopedia of Activism and Social Justice, Encyclopedia of African American Society, International Encyclopedia of Political Science, Encyclopedia of Business Ethics and Society, Encyclopedia of Children, Adolescents, and the Media, and the Handbook of Death & Dying to name just a few.
How can I download Collins e-books?: EBL and EBSCO e-books are available for download in EPUB, a format especially designed for electronic books. These files can be downloaded to your home computer or laptop, and also to many mobile devices including dedicated e-book readers such as the Nook, or generic mobile devices such as the iPhone or iPad, or Android tablets and phones. Both EBL and EBSCO e-books are designed for Adobe Digital Editions. To access all of Adobe Digital Editions features, and to avoid interruptions when you’re downloading to a mobile device, register for an Adobe Digital ID.
Get Adobe Digital Editions
Sign up for an Adobe Digital ID
If you don’t have a dedicated e-reader (like Nook, Sony, or Kobo) and are using an iOS or android device, you will need software that allows you to read the e-book. Bluefire e-book reader is available for both android and iOS devices. You can get Bluefire Reader as you download your first e-book.
Get the Bluefire e-book reader app
Is there a good guide to “free” e-books? We have listed many popular open source or “free” e-book collections on our Guide to e-books. Some of the more popular collections are:
Offers over 36,000 free e-books to download to your PC, Kindle, iPad, iPhone, Android or other portable device. Choose between ePub, Kindle, HTML and simple text formats. Most books are in the public domain, free of copyright restrictions, mainly published prior to 1923.
Open Library
Offers over 1,000,000 free e-books. Open Library is a project of the non-profit Internet Archive, and has been funded in part by a grant from the California State Library and the Kahle/Austin Foundation.
Online Books Page
Lists over 35,000 free books on the Web, including Banned Books online, from John Mark Ockerbloom at the University of Pennsylvania.
Tell us what you think: Take our short opinion poll about e-books: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/CVZ66TF.
Need Information? Don’t forget the Collins Memorial Library Database List A-Z
Questions? Contact your liaison librarian
Comments: Contact Jane Carlin, Library Director
Remember – Your best search engine is a Librarian!