Over 72,000 E-Books Now Available through Ebrary's Academic Complete

Ebrary's Academic Complete, a collection of over 72,000 electronic books from major publishers suitable for university libraries, is now being provided through the Cheng Library. Over 290 publishers - including Oxford University Press, Taylor and Francis, Brill Academic Publishers, John Wiley and Sons, Cambridge University Press, and Ashgate Publishing - are represented in the collection, and there is something for every field of study on campus. Approximately 75 percent of the e-books in the collection were published within the last ten years, making Academic Complete an excellent source of recent scholarship.

The Ebrary platform offers a variety of features for using ebooks, including:

•     Support for mobiles devices: iPad, iPhone, Kindle, Kobo, Nook, and Sony Reader
•     The ability to create notes and highlight text within any ebook you use
•     Personal bookshelves that automatically store links to highlights, notes, and more, providing an archive of research
•     Multiple options for searching and navigating
•     Automatic citations when text is printed or copied and pasted into Word or any text applications
•     the ability to transform text into a hyperlink to a URL of your choice
•     Text-to-speech and other keyboard shortcuts to assist end-users with special accessibility needs

A brief online training video provides a quick orientation to the Ebrary platform, and a two-page paper Quick Start Guide (in PDF format) is also available online.

With the acquisition of Academic Complete, the Cheng Library now offers a total of over 76,000 electronic books, representing more than 20 percent of the Library's entire book collection. All of our e-books are accessible through the Library Catalog and can be used off-campus at any time of day or night. E-books in the catalog can be identified by the following signs:

• They all include "[electronic resource]" as part of the displayed title in search results
• Their "Location" in the Library is always listed as "Internet Resource"
• The catalog record for every e-book includes a "Linked Resources" hyperlink prominently displayed near the top of the catalog record - just click on it to go to the book

This semester the Cheng Library will be offering three training workshops to help you get the most out of e-books. The workshop, titled "E-Books for Everyone: Using E-Books for Coursework, Research, and Teaching" will be offered on

• Thursday, February 9, 3:30-4:30 pm, Cheng Library Paterson Room (Room 213)
• Wednesday, March 14, 3:30-4:30 pm, Valley Road Building (Room TBA)
• Thursday, April 12, 3:30-4:30 pm, Cheng Library Amy Job Classroom (Room 114a)

Cheng Library staff are also available to offer e-book training by appointment for classes or to individuals at the Reference Desk. We urge everyone to give e-books a try this semester and let us know what you think. Please contact Richard Kearney (x 2165) if you have any questions or comments about our e-books.