The new titles, which include academic monographs and reference titles from several different publishers, are all accessible through the Cheng Library's online catalog. A clearly marked link within each catalog record will "open" the book in Ebrary's e-book reader on the web. The Ebrary screen provides easy access to each book's table of contents and supports full-text searching of a book. Students and faculty can easily navigate within a book by moving through individual pages or jumping to matching instances of search terms, copy selected text for notes, print pages, and save citations to RefWorks.
Ebrary's web platform, however, includes several additional features that are accessible when a user creates a personal account on the site. With a personal Ebrary account, one can:
- Highlight and annotate books
- Create links to other online resources within books
- Create a personal "bookshelf" within an account and save books and annotations to it
- Create folders on the bookshelf to organize research
- Make use of linked online resources
Personal account holders can also use their Ebrary ebooks with Java-based reader software that can be installed on Windows or Linux machines. In addition to supporting the personalized features listed above, the reader software also offers text-to-speech functionality and other options for greater accessibility.
A Quick Start Guide (in PDF format) is available to get you up and running with Ebrary e-books, and Cheng Library staff are happy to answer any questions you have about e-books. Faculty interested in ordering books in e-book format should contact their departmental liaison in the Library - please see this list of Library liaisons to find the contact for your department.
