Finding E-Books

E-Book Platforms

E-books are online books which are not physically located in our Library but the Library purchases access to them on the web. The Trent Library has access to over 500,000 e-books.

When you connect to an e-book, you're using it from a provider's or publisher's website. The publisher, or a partner company, loads the books on a server which provides a platform (software) for multiple users to access the books. This platform establishes how the book looks and functions. There are a variety of platforms available for hosting e-books.

Finding E-Books

There are two ways to find e-books available from the Trent Library:

1. Go to one of the publisher websites (platforms) and search.

• The complete list of platforms is found on our E-Resources page, under E-Books.
• The popular platforms we use at Trent are ebrary, Scholars Portal Books, and EBSCO eBooks, with smaller collections at ACLS Humanities E-Books, and Gutenberg-e. Some of these books are available on the publisher's site as well as these platforms.
• If you don't know the publisher of a book, this may be a bothersome way to search because you need to go to multiple sites.

2. Search TOPCAT by title, author, or keyword. Most e-books purchased by the Trent Library are listed in TOPCAT, with links to the books on the publisher's website.

• This is the quickest way to search for e-books, but it won't always find every book we own.
• See instructions below.

Search TOPCAT by Title

See a video on Finding an E-Book in TOPCAT. (2 mins.)

E-books are listed in TOPCAT along with all our Library resources. If you know the title of a book, search for the title to see all items with that title. If we have a particular book both online and in print, there will be 2 records for it.

Click on "Full Details" for the item you wish to view. Notice that an e-book has no call number (it says "Online Resource" instead), and a print book does have a call number. Only items that are found on our shelves have call numbers.

The record for an e-book contains a "Connect" button. Click it to link to the online e-book. These books are not physically in our library but we have access to them through the web. They are not on a Trent server; we have paid for online access at the publisher's e-book site. Once you're connected, use the software provided to navigate through the book, display text, and print pages.

Search TOPCAT by Keyword

When you want to find books on a topic, you use a keyword search (see the Keyword Searching tutorial). To search TOPCAT by keyword and limit your results to ONLY e-books, use a Power Search. Change the "location" to E-Book and fill in your search terms.

Your results will ONLY include items listed as e-books.

Our E-Resources Webpage

Most of our e-books come as part of packages from publishers. On our E-Resources page we list these packages and you can go to a publisher's website to search it. Click the beside each product to find help on using it effectively.

Notes on E-Books

E-books vary in their appearance and useability, based on the site that provides access. There are variations in the number of users that can access them simultaneously, how they display, and how you navigate through them. Our Library has no control over these differences.

E-Books purchased by libraries are not the same as those sold to individuals for use on an e-book reader. Library copies must be licenced and packaged for mounting on a server, accessible over the web to multiple authorized users without a fee. This is quite different from downloading one copy from a bookstore for loading on an individual machine.

Some e-books can be downloaded to your computer or device for a limited amount of time.  Look for a "download" button in the software.  If there is no button, the book is not available for download, but you can access it on the web and save/print pages.

Most platforms provide the option of creating an account for yourself, then adding favourite books to a bookshelf, making notations, etc.  Take advantage of these features when you can.

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Last Modified: April 17, 2012
Maintained by , Thomas J. Bata Library.