#ebrary

Here's a sampling of some titles you can find in the ebrary collection.

Reminder for login access—

STUDENTS: Use your student ID on the front of your badge for BOTH Username & PIN (they are the same).

A quick tip. 

problem:

eBrary is a rather large provider of eBooks. One can often get free subscription through public or private library. However, the online reading experience is rather painful, and even downloading the ebooks into Adobe Digital Editions (ebooks with expiration date) is not idea. At the least one has to forego making digital annotations.

so... get pdf of course, but ebrary only  allows to export 60 pages of pdfs per day. thankfully, they use a simple cookie to track the usage, and that easy to circumvent in may ways - one of which follows

solution:

use INCOGNITO window. Chrome, Firefox... 

ctrl + shift + n in chrome. 

every 60 pages, restart the incognito window and download another 60 pages. In a few passes, even The Remembrance of Days Past would be all yours. 

then, combine the pdfs with psf Xchange Viewer (free) or Adobe Acrobat (paid). 

then, OCR the pages. of course! pdf Xchange viewer does it for free again, while Acrobat gives you more power user options. 

The Ebrary eBook collection offers dozens of books from leading publishers in Nursing and Allied Health, as well as a few additional categories including agriculture, recreation, history, military science, psychology, political science and social sciences. View the Library’s collection of Ebrary books here and follow the steps below as we walk you through the process of viewing and downloading an Ebrary eBook.

Find an eBook

You can perform a simple search of the Ebrary collection using the search bar at the top of the page or click the “All Subjects” link to the right of the search bar to pull up a list of books in each of 12 categories. Once you’ve selected a book, view it in Ebrary’s “QuickView” option by selecting the title or clicking the “ebrary reader” button to install Ebrary’s reader software. The QuickView toolbar allows you to turn pages with the left and right arrow buttons, magnify a page and take notes in the book if you’re signed in to an Ebrary account. Using the “InfoTools” button at the top of the page viewer also allows you to perform searches, copy text or print up to 60 pages in PDF format.

You might also see a button on the toolbar that says “Release This Title” at the top right of the page. That means the book is a “single-user-only” document. Only one person can view the eBook at a time. Clicking the “Release This Title” button frees the title so another user can access it right away when you’re done. Otherwise, the eBook is available to you for as long as you like until there’s been at least 15 minutes of inactivity (no page turning, printing, etc). Once you’ve been idle for 15 minutes, you lose access to the book if another user is waiting in the queue to read it. A user will receive a message if you’re using the book they want to read, and then receive the option to wait in the queue for it at that time. Once you’ve given up access to the book, the new user has five minutes to start reading it before it goes to whoever is waiting next.

Don’t see the “Release This Title” button? That means the book is a “multi-user” document—more than one person can access it at the same time and the book can even be downloaded to read offline.

Download the eBook

All Ebrary eBooks can have up to 60-page selections downloaded and saved to a PDF for offline viewing, but not all Ebrary eBooks can be downloaded in their entirety (For a list of publishers that prohibit full-document downloading see here). Unlike the EBSCO eBook database, Ebrary always shows the “Download” button on an eBook record—you just have to click on it to find out if the publisher has actually allowed the book to be downloaded or not. Single-user-only books can only be read online. But if you’ve found a multi-user eBook that is available for download and you’d like to read it offline, you’ll just need to create an Ebrary account.

If you’ve clicked the “Download” button without creating or signing in to an Ebrary account, a window will appear and let you know to do so. Clicking the “Sign In” link from the upper right-hand corner of any Ebrary page prompts you to sign in to your account or create a new one from the “Create an account” link below the login. All that’s required is a username, password, your name and your e-mail address. Once logged in, you can take notes on the books you read in QuickView, or download your selected muti-user title.

Once you’ve clicked the “Download” button and signed in, you’ll be able to either create an image PDF of a chapter (again, up to 60 pages), or download the entire book for a 14-day checkout period using the free Adobe Digital Editions software (For more information on Adobe Digital Editions, see our previous blog post here). Adobe Digital Editions lets you read eBooks on your computer when you’re not connected to the Internet, transfer them to a mobile device (except for the Amazon Kindle e-reader) and return them early if you need to check out more. Just keep in mind that returns can take up to one hour to be recognized, and up to 10 Ebrary eBooks can be checked out at one time.

For more information on Ebrary eBooks, you can visit Ebrary’s help page to see an overview of download options and Ebrary readers.

When today’s tech-savvy students search for books, they aren’t limited to the hard copy tomes lining our Library shelves. If the right print book can’t be found, if the library building can’t be used in person, or if students just want to expand their research across even more mediums, the CSN Library eBook collections fills a distinct need from their virtual shelves.

The eBooks can be found on our website (www.csn.edu/library) under the “Article Databases” tab on our main search box. Clicking eBook Collections takes you into our list of eBook databases of digital texts that range from encyclopedias to classic literature to technology handbooks. You might also come across an eBook when searching the CSN Library catalog under the “Catalog” tab on our home page. The eBook collections cover government and politics, legal information, nursing and allied health, science, medicine, computer programs, digital media, art, history, and even pop culture. It all depends on where you search and what you’re looking for.

 Reading eBooks: Online and Off

All of the Library’s eBook collections allow for easy reading while online. To view books in the EBSCO eBook database, you can select the “eBook Full Text” link on the book of your choice and start clicking through pages immediately. Books in Ebrary open on the computer in their own page viewer as well. The Gale Virtual Reference Library provides encyclopedias and reference books to view or download to a PDF document or even listen to in an MP3 audio file. But what if you want to access a book when you’re not connected to the Internet? Not all digital books can be downloaded, but some databases do allow you to borrow eBooks to read on your computer or transfer to mobile devices like the Nook e-reader or iPhone for the duration of your checkout period. There are a few more steps involved in downloading eBooks, but the results are well worth the freedom of being able to read eBooks offline.

All About Adobe Digital Editions 

The first extra step for offline reading is downloading Adobe Digital Editions if you don’t already have it installed on your computer. This free software ultimately makes the eBook experience easier, providing a single place to save books from multiple databases as you borrow them. Adobe Digital Editions monitors download time periods for you and causes the eBook to become unreadable after the checkout period is over. But it also allows you to transfer eBooks to mobile devices (except for the Kindle), organize your library of eBooks, search the books, annotate them, and return them early if necessary so you can borrow more.

To start utilizing eBooks offline, download Adobe Digital Editions 1.7.1 or higher from Adobe's website. It can be installed for Windows 7, Vista, or XP here or for Mac OS X here . Click “Install” and follow the prompts to complete the download. You will then be asked to create an Adobe account as well (Note: if you plan to read the device on a Nook, use the same e-mail address you used to create your Nook account for your Adobe account).

Once your account has been set up, Adobe Digital Editions is ready for use on the computer where you installed it for all your eBook needs!

So now it’s time to view your eBook. After the book has been downloaded, it will open in Adobe Digital Editions to be read on the computer or saved to your e-reader, usually by connecting the device to your computer via USB cable and dragging the cover of the eBook into the e-reader folder that appears. When you’re completely done with the book, you can return it early by clicking on the “Library View” icon in the upper left-hand corner of Adobe Digital Editions and selecting “Return borrowed item” from the book’s menu. Otherwise, the book will expire after the designated checkout period and return itself automatically.

More Help

Need further eBook assistance? Our upcoming Tech Talk posts will walk you through the steps to access books from several of our eBook platforms so you’ll be able to successfully utilize whatever resource you need and count yourself among the tech-savvy library users too.

Click the links below for details on using each collection:

-EBSCOhost eBooks: nearly 21,000 books on a variety of topics

-Ebrary eBook Collection

-Safari Tech Books Online: technology, software, and digital media books and videos

-Rittenhouse Health Science Electronic Book Collection: for Nursing and Allied Health

-Gale Virtual Reference Library: full-text encyclopedias and reference sources

-ABC-CLIO eBook Collection: subjects include art, music, history, pop culture, and more

-Coming Soon: SpringerLink eBooks: nearly 48,000 books on a variety of topics, particularly science and medicine

For more guided help on Adobe Digital Editions, check out the screenshots offered on http://library.ellibs.com/help/ADE or talk to any CSN reference librarian!