Accessing Library E-Books

Accessing E-Books at Marian University

Welcome to our accessing e-books tutorial. In this guide, click the links presented and follow instructions within the text. Click the next and previous arrows to progress. Off-campus users will need to sign in with MU credentials when linking to a database.

Where to Begin

As with all of our resources, the best place to start is at the library homepage.

Users can access our E-Book collections either from the catalog or the Articles and Databases. From this page, the main providers mentioned in this tutorial (Ebrary, Ebsco, JSTOR, and Springer) are accessed alphabetically or under the All Database Types --> Ebooks drop-down option.

 

Searching from the Catalog

One way is to search the catalog. Click here and search the following text:

the iliad mt:ebk

All the results should be in E-Book format, containing the title "The Iliad". Look at the results. For the first result, click here to access the record.

 

What Now?

This is the detailed record in the ebrary database for the this e-book. Note the options available, especially the Chapter Download option. Users can also print and email specific pages (though copyright limits the amount in any one session).

Also note the Full Download button. This will require:

• signing in to ebrary with your Marian username & password (upper right corner)

• downloading free software (Adobe Digital Editions or the Bluefire Reader app) to your laptop/tablet that will retain the entirety of the book on your device for 14 days.

Signing in will also provide highlighting/note-taking options for users when reading.

Ebsco E-Books

Another provider of E-Books is Ebsco. Say you're interested in reading "The Origin of Speech" Perform an ebook search with the following search string:

"the origin of speech" mt:ebk

Take a look at the first title, and click here. Note the similar options as in ebrary. Users will be able to either scroll page by page or download the entirety of the e-book (Download This eBook (Offline)). Full downloads require first creating a free ebsco account as well as installing Adobe Digital Editions for offline viewing to a mobile device.

However, when clicking eBook Full Text one can view each page with options for printing, emailing or saving portions of the ebook. Like with ebrary, these latter three options will be limited per session.

Springer & JSTOR E-Books

1 of 2Another E-Book collection is from Springer, a publisher containing mainly science related titles. Perform an indexed search for Springer e-books related to thermodynamics with the following search:

thermodynamics mt:ebk pb:springer

Click here to view the book written by Reinhard Hentschke.

Note the main difference between this collection and the ebrary/Ebsco collections. Springer allows unlimited access for printing and saving the content. Either the whole book or specific chapters can be downloaded without restriction.

The only downside to Springer titles is that there is not yet an option to create a citation from within its interface (but it can be done from within the catalog, by clicking the Cite option to the right of the record).

 

Springer & JSTOR E-Books

2 of 2

JSTOR ebooks are much like Springer, in that they can be downloaded without any restrictions. That said, downloads are specifically for chapters of books. The entirety of a book cannot be downloaded from JSTOR.

Click here to view an example of a chapter from JSTOR's ebook platform.

 

Open Access Collections

The library also links to free ebooks from open access or public domain publishers like Project Gutenberg. From the catalog, perform a search for Mary Shelley's works with the search string specifically searching Project Gutenberg's collection:

au:mary shelley mt:ebk pb:gutenberg

Take a look at the record for The Last Man (opens in a new window). Information about the title can be found from the Bibrec tab at the top, opposed to the download tab which lists various formats (Epub, Kindle, etc.) and destinations for saving (Google Drive, Dropbox).

The End!

That's it! Thanks for viewing our E-Books tutorial. Any comments or questions can be directed to librarystaff@marian.edu.

 

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