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E-Books at Iowa State University

This guide provides an overview of the library's e-book providers.

General Information about Electronic Books

Finding E-books

  • Use Quick Search. When using Quick Search, the results will contain records for print and electronic books. The PDF above explains how to focus Quick Search results to e-books only. Quick Search will match your search terms to general information about each e-book, such as title, authors, overall subjects covered, and sometimes chapter titles.
  • Search the e-book package. E-books are available from a variety of publishers (e.g. Springer, Oxford, Elsevier, Wiley). E-books are also available in aggregate packages that contain books from a variety of publishers. The packages may be multi-disciplinary (e.g. EBSCO eBook Collection) or discipline specific (e.g. AccessEngineering or Berg Fashion Library). For a listing of e-book publishers and packages specific to your discipline, click on the tabs on this guide. Searching within an e-book package limits which books are searched, but your search terms will find results from anywhere in the books' contents. This is useful if you are seeking highly specific information.

Restrictions

Depending on the publisher and package, there may be restrictions on:

  • Number of simultaneous users. For example, some e-books in the EBSCO eBook Collection only allow one user at a time. There are no limits to the number of simultaneous users for e-books in Science Direct and SpringerLink.
  • Saving and/or printing. There may be limits on the number of pages/chapters that can be saved or printed (e.g. Oxford Scholarship Online).

Downloading

Some books in the  EbscoHOST package are available for downloading in their entirety and are available for varying checkout times in the Adobe Digital Editions format. For electronic books that are found in SpringerLink, Science Direct, and the Wiley Online Library, the book chapters are formatted as a PDF, and these can be saved/printed. Click on the "Downloading & Mobile Devices" tab for more information.

Your Librarian

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Kris Stacy-Bates
she/her/hers
Contact:
150 Parks Library

Iowa State University

515 294-6819