Typical questions

• • How can I find online books on the catalogue?

• • Why can't I print out all of this section?

Starting points

• • Many of the questions raised by students concerning e-books are related to digital rights management. It is a common assumption that all books must be available online. However, at the present time, not all titles offered for individual users via commercial vendors such as Amazon are available for purchase by libraries as they may not have suitable licenses.

• • Library licensed e-books often operate differently to those purchased for individual use via readers such as Kindle and this can cause initial confusion. There may be limits to printing and downloading facilities that are specific to the book package so remind users to check help screens for details.

• • Many libraries offer titles via e-book packages. These are great as they allow cross-searching of many titles. However, the login pages may not be via publishers home pages or easily retrieved via search engines so students should be reminded to check links via their institutional library catalogue or online learning pages.

• • Many governments, charities and think tanks now publish reports in e- format only. However, libraries frequently do not index these items on their catalogues. Therefore students should be advised to search for these publications separately using an internet search engine. The subject sections of this book also identify key sources for tracing Grey Literature.

• • Some free e-book websites are of low quality. Advise students to carefully check publication dates and details before use.

Recommended resources

This section highlights major free collections suitable for academic use.

Directory of Open Access Books

www.doabooks.org

A service of OAPEN Foundation that works with publishers to increase the discoverability of open access material. Search the database by title, subject or publisher.

Europeana

www.europeana.eu

European Commission-funded portal working to build a virtual European library offering free access to Europe's cultural resources. It includes millions of texts (manuscripts, papers, e-books), images (photographs, maps), films (moving images, videos, film clips, television broadcasts) and sounds from Europe's main research libraries, archives and galleries. Most are historic.

Gallica

gallica.bnf.fr

Digital library of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Provides free access to thousands of full text historic French language books, journals and newspapers from the library.