eBooks Part III: Ebrary eBook Collection

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.

You can also contact any CSN reference librarian by phone or in person for troubleshooting tips and friendly advice to make the most of your eBook experience.