Find e-Books

The J.W. England Library provides access to e-books through Primo, our discovery system.  E-books and print books can be discovered side by side in a single search.  Some e-books, such as the AMA Manual of Style, exist as standalone titles, while others are part of large collections provided by vendors like ProQuest and EBSCO.  Read on below to learn more about finding e-books in Primo and using our two largest e-book packages: EBSCO's eBook Collection and ProQuest's Ebook Central.

All e-books in the library collection can be located in Primo.  This includes both the individual titles we have purchased, and the large collections of e-books supplied by vendors like EBSCO and ProQuest.

To find e-books in Primo:

• Run a search on your topic of interest.
• E-books and print books will appear in your search results along with articles, dissertations, and other types of resources.
• If you want to see only books and book chapters, select the Books and/or Book Chapters option in the right-hand filtering menu under Resource Type.
• Any book that says "Online Access" or "Full Text Available" is an e-book or book chapter.  Click on the link provided to access the title.
• If you are off-campus, you may be asked to login using your USciences credentials before gaining access to the book.

Using Ebook Central and eBook Collection:

• Some of the ebooks you discover in Primo are hosted in large databases called Ebook Central and EBSCO's eBook Collection.
• After you discover these books in Primo, you will be directed into the respective database to read and use the book.
• Each of these databases also allows you to create personal accounts that you can use to download e-books, annotate them, and save titles to a personal bookshelf.  More details on these e-book databases can be found below.

Ebook Central is a subscription ebook database that includes over 160,000 titles across many disciplines.  All the books in this collection offer unlimited simultaneous users and may be used for classroom instruction or research. These books may be read onscreen or downloaded to a computer, eReader, or mobile device. Some highlights of this collection include:

• Over 160,000 ebooks available from the following packages: Academic Complete, College Complete, Reference Books, and University Press collection.
• To download an ebook, you must first create a personal account in Ebook Central.  There are then some additional steps depending on the type of device you are using.  Just follow the prompts in Ebook Central to download the book you'd like to read:
  • To download books to your computer: Install Adobe Digital Editions following the prompts in Ebook Central.  After downloading the book to your PC, you can then transfer it to your eReader [Kindles are not compatible with these ebooks].  Step-by-step instructions
  • Download ebooks to your mobile device:  Books may be downloaded to Android or iOS devices as well.  You will need the Bluefire Reader app to access the books.  Step-by-step instructions

eBook Collection is a subscription database that provides access to thousands of e-books across many disciplines.  You can search or browse for e-books just like you look for articles in other databases.

When you open this database you will see the eBooks landing page, which features galleries of highlighted titles and allows you to browse individual categories.  You can do a basic search on the main screen, or click on "Advanced Search" to access EBSCO's familiar searching interface.

Reading e-books onscreen is easy.  Simply click on a title of interest and select "eBook Full Text" to read the book in EBSCO's online viewer.  If you're signed into EBSCOhost using a My EBSCOhost account, you can also save the book to a Folder to read later. 

Checkout/Download: You can also checkout books and download them to your computer, eReader, or mobile device.  Complete directions for downloading e-books are posted below.  Books can be checked out for either 7 or 14 days and are available in either PDF or EPUB format.  Once the checkout period is over, the e-book will no longer appear on your device and will be returned to the EBSCO platform for others to use.