Ebook Readings for Course Work

We are pleased by how many faculty are using chapters from our many ebooks as part of their assigned course work.  Sometimes a collection of these readings (often from several different books) can actually take the place of a text book, saving students money.   And who doesn't like to save money?

If you are planning on assigning your students chapters to read from our ebooks in the Spring semester, we would like to request that you let your librarian liaison know.  Why?

1.       Most of our ebooks are part of our subscription to Ebrary's Academic Complete collection.  Each book in that collection is under contract between the publisher and Ebrary for a certain period of time.  Once the contract expires, if a new contract is not signed, then the book will disappear from our subscription, sometimes in the middle of a semester.  If you let us know ahead of time, we can correspond with Ebrary to see if any of your assigned titles are in danger of being removed soon.  If any are, we can often “purchase” a perpetual rights copy of the online book.

2.      Some of our ebooks only allow one or three simultaneous users.  This can represent a problem if all your students must read chapters from the book in a limited amount of time.  If the ebook you choose for your course is in Ebrary, you can see how many simultaneous users are allowed, by searching on the title and looking under availability where the system will tell you, "Your institution has access to "x" copies of this book" (A).

                 

For the title above, three students can read the book at any one time  (A).  At the moment this book was searched, two copies were already in use and only one copy remained for another student to read (B). Needless to say, students become frustrated in attempting to complete a course assignment when they are repeatedly denied access because all our copies are in use at the time they sign in. 

If you would like to assign a limited access ebook, your librarian liaison can explore options with you, such as procuring another electronic copy of the book, upgrading to an unlimited users license if available, or procuring a print copy of the book (which is usually cheaper) to be put on reserve in the library as a back-up copy.

And if you have never assigned readings from any of our ebooks, but would like to explore this option, your librarian liaison can also assist you with identifying possible titles.