ebrary Ebooks We have two electronic book databases, ebrary and EBSCOhost Ebooks. For ebrary, start by clicking the icon on the library homepage. You may need to login. To do so, use your student ID number expanded to 8 digits, so, if ID number is 123456, ebrary ID will be 00123456. Enter this number and you will be granted access to the site. At the top is a simple search box with an option for advanced search. The Advanced search lets you change the field that is being searched. This is nice if you are looking for a specific book/author, but not necessarily the best when searching for multiple resources for a paper. There s also a Browse by Topic option accessible from the homepage. This can be a great discovery tool if you are not quite sure what you want to write about!
To show you what you can do with ebrary, I ve done a simple search, using the keywords Fair Trade AND coffee. Below is what the results page looks like: At the top there are limiters (ways to reduce the number of documents in your search). They phrase them as saying Focus your search using: Any of the selected subjects (e.g. Math OR Science) [or] All of the selected subjects (e.g. Math AND Science) Then, there are columns of topics that patrons can pick to narrow the focus of their search. As of right now, you can see that our search produced 30,934 results which is way too many! We d probably want to narrow down the results using these terms. For now, focus on what you can see on the results page. Over on the right side of the screen, you can save the search or export your search results, can change your view to short, medium, or long (defaults to medium), and can change the way your results are sorted. It defaults to Relevance, but you can change it to title, contributor, publisher, or date. On the left are the actual results. We can see the title, author, publisher, date published, and hyperlinked subject terms. We can also go straight to Table of Contents, Download, Java-based Reader, Find Similar, EndNote and Citavi, RefWorks, or Add to Bookshelf. Note that RefWorks, EndNote & Citavi require access to those specific tools. These would require paid access which MACC does not have nor provide.
If we click on the title, we ll see: On the left, we have an image of the book. Below that we have the option to Read Online or Full Download. We can also choose Chapter Download, Add to Bookshelf, Share Link to Book or Cite Book. If you just want to read parts of the book online, choose Read Online. If you want to check the book out for 2 weeks and read it on your tablet or ereader, choose Full Download. If you only really need a chapter or a few pages, you can choose chapter download which will let you create a PDF of the chapter that you need. You can then save that to your computer or print a copy. In the center of the page there is information about the book, including title, author, and a table of contents. There is also a section that tells you the availability of the book. MACC has unlimited access to this book and we can copy up to 35 pages, print up to 70 pages, or check the book out for 14 days. Finally on the right, we have bibliographic information, which could be used to create a citation. You might remember that on the left hand side there was a link to Cite Book. This is a citation tool, but it is not the best! For instance, when I attempted to use the tool for the book it had the right information and the correct punctuation, but it did not italicize the title of the book or the database used. This would result in lost points if a student relied on it.
If you click Read online, you get a page that looks like this: On the left, you have the same information as the previous page, and this area can be closed by clicking the x in the corner. On the right is the book. Use the arrows in the upper right corner to move between pages, or scroll down using your mouse. Above the book, there are icons to connect you with your options. From left to right: Full Download, Chapter Download, Copy, Print, Add to Bookshelf, Link to Book, Get Citation, Highlight, Add Note, Add Bookmark, Zoom Out, Zoom In, and Zoom (Fit Width, Fit Page) The ability to highlight and add notes makes ebrary incredibly helpful as a research tool. If you find a passage that you want to highlight or write a note about, just select the text and a box will pop up with the option to copy, highlight in yellow, highlight in blue, highlight in pink, or add note. To use the highlight/add note function, you must be logged in. Once you highlight or add note, the book will automatically be added to your bookshelf. The bookshelf is a place for patrons to store any items that they may want to revisit later. For me, this is a great selling point of Ebrary. You don t have to download anything or print anything off. You can make notes within Ebrary and save those items to your bookshelf to visit later on. You can also store books in folders, to keep them separated. There is a link to Bookshelf on the top of the page.
If you choose to download the book to a computer, click Download and the following will appear: The next step leads you to download Adobe Digital Editions. This is free software that is needed to download and read ebrary ebooks. Once that step is complete you will see a box that says the title of the book you are about to download. Click Download your Book and let the computer do its thing. Once it s downloaded to the computer, you can transfer it to an e-reader with a usb cable.