It is unclear at this time, whether our reserve or print textbook collections will be available to students in the Fall. We will not be purchasing electronic equivalents of our print textbook collection as it would be cost prohibitive. Prices for e-books are 2x to 10x the cost of print books, and usually restricted to one or three simultaneous users. It is highly unlikely we will be purchasing any new textbooks for the Fall semester.
It is strongly recommended that faculty use existing electronic resources in library databases or use Open Access or OER (Open Education Resources) for teaching in the Fall. We can help you do that.
For help in finding e-books to use with your classes, contact your liaison.
Here is a list of titles in our print textbook collection that are available online.
The College Libraries has purchased into perpetuity several Springer e-book collections, roughly 93,000 titles. Below is a list of subject collections we have purchased listed by publishing year. These books are findable in our QuickSearch discovery. Springer permalinks lack our proxy server prefix, so you will need to edit them to create usable links from off-campus.
2005-2012
2013-2019
Search tips: The Springer interface is not user-friendly. Here are some suggestions:
Try these search keywords:
Download an Excel spreadsheet of Springer textbooks (4900 titles). Use the filters to sort by Subject Collection Name (column F), and by Readership Level (column D)
We have access to ~200,000 e-books in Ebook Central. There are a few textbooks, but the collection consists mostly of academic e-books with some popular non-fiction. Most of the e-books have unlimited access, meaning an unlimited number of students can access the book at the same time. These titles will display in Quick Search with the collection name: "Ebook Central Academic Complete."
There are a few exceptions. We have a select number of books (1174 titles) that have single user limits. These titles display in Quick Search with the collection name "Ebook Central." Use has been expanded during the pandemic to unlimited, until June 30th. After June 30th, the number of simultaneous users will drop to a single user. Here is an Excel list of the 1174 titles.
After June 30th, make sure the availability says "unlimited." New titles are added to this subscription every month. Occasionally titles are deleted by publishers 2x year (June and December).
Most of the books in Ebook Central are searchable in Quick Search. Sometimes the subject heading "textbooks" is assigned, but more often there are no terms or tags to identify textbooks in most of our databases, but Ebook Central interface has some pretty good search and management features.
Start with an Advanced Search
LC Subject Heading = Biology (or other broad subject term like Art History, or Philosophy)
In the second row, "Keyword & Full Text" use keywords (one at a time) to search book descriptions that would indicate a textbook:
Click on a title to display the full record.
Under Book Details on the right, click show more. Check to see if the publisher is academic. You won't find Pearson or Cengage titles, but there are other publishers like Wiley and MacMillan. Look to see what LC subject headings assigned to the book. Redo your search using those subject terms to find similar books.
Some of the most useful features of Ebook Central:
QuickSearch includes Springer and Ebook Central titles, plus OER textbooks.
Do an Advanced Search in Quick Search.
Do a Subject search (e.g. Biology) combined with at title or Keyword search using common keywords found in textbooks:
Use the facets in the left panel to limit your search:
See the discipline specific pages for open textbooks for specific subject areas
