netLibrary, a privately held company, is an Internet-based electronic book collection that attempts to combine the concept of a traditional library with electronic publications.   OhioLINK has purchased a number of books that are available to Hiram College students, faculty, and staff.  Additionally, a number of books no longer covered by copyright are available to all users.  One big advantage of electronic books is that you can search the full-text of all the books to find those most relevant to your needs.

You may access neLibrary either by searching the OhioLINK Central Catalog (a word search on 'netlibrary' will return a list of all the OhioLINK purchased books that have been cataloged) or by going directly to netLibrary.   If you choose to go directly, we highly recommend that you limit your searching to those books in My Library's Custom Collection (those purchased by OhioLINK) and the Public Collection (those available to everyone).  netLibrary contains far more books that the 1,100+ to which we have access.

Setting up a netLibrary account is easy.  Just access netLibrary from any Hiram College computer and click on Create An Account.  You will need to enter your first name, last name, country, and email address.  You will also be asked to create a user name and a password.  While having an account is not absolutely necessary, it is useful.  Without an account you are limited to viewing items when using an on-campus computer.  With an account you may check out books and view them from anywhere you have Internet access.

Once you have found a book of interest, you may either VIEW or CHECK-OUT the book.  Choose VIEW if you just want to browse the book for a short time.  VIEWING is much like coming into the library, finding a book on the shelf, and taking it to a comfortable chair to look it over for a few minutes or an hour.   Choose CHECK-OUT if you want to "keep" the book to use during the next 24 hours.  After 24 hours, the book is automatically checked back into the netLibrary collection so there are no overdues.

OhioLINK has generally bought only one "copy" of each book.  So when someone else in OhioLINK is VIEWING a book or has checked it out, the book is off the shelf and not available to anyone else in OhioLINK.  When you select a book that is not available, you will get a message indicating when the book will become available.

For more information, see netLibrary's Help page or contact David Everett at the Hiram College Library (email: everettdd@hiram.edu; phone: (330) 569-5353.