Hiram College Library: Find: E-Books

About E-Books

(Electronic-BOOK) The electronic counterpart of a printed book, which can be viewed on a desktop computer, laptop, smartphone or e-book reader.

The major problem with e-books is the many formats competing for prime time, including Adobe PDF, Microsoft Reader, eReader, Mobipocket Reader, EPUB, Kindle and iPad. All e-book formats have a search capability, but most do not support a direct dictionary lookup, which means if a person looks up the term "network," all the definitions that contain the word "network" are retrieved rather than the single definition of that term. The results are akin to the mountain of results retrieved by a search engine.

In the vast majority of cases when you want to read an E-Book from the sources described below you can do it directly on the computer you are using. Either because the material is displayed in some sort of book format, such as Safari Books Online, or it can be downloaded as a PDF. Unfortunately the state of the Ebooks market is in constant flux, therefore we can't always predict if there will be a problem in access this material. If you do please come or contact the library for assistance.

If you are having trouble reading a PDF perhaps you do not have the reader, this can be fixed by visiting http://get.adobe.com/reader/.

E-Book EBSCO Search

To find variants of a word, truncate using an *

Electronic Books Center (EBC) This link opens in a new window
Full-text of hundreds of specialized reference books, including encyclopedias, handbooks, and biographical collections. The text is fully searchable.
Safari Books Online (O'Reilly) This link opens in a new window
The Safari O'Reilly Academic Learning Platform allows for unlimited simultaneous users. All users must provide their Hiram College email address in order to use the new O'Reilly platform.

At the welcome page, in the “select your institution” drop-down, select "Not listed? Click here.", enter your hiram.edu email address and click "Let's Go".

Note, setting up a personal account after entering your email address is not required for future access.

Guest and walk in users may use safari @ hiram.edu as their email address for access.
EBSCO eBook Collection This link opens in a new window
Hiram College students, faculty, and staff have access to more than 15,000 books in full-text in this collection. In additional to these titles, a number of books in the public domain are available to all users. Note: This collection was formerly known as netLibrary.
Humanities E-Book This link opens in a new window
This database, produced by the American Council for Learned Societies, provides searchable full-text of some 1500 books in most humanities disciplines and area studies. The titles are from 250 publishers.
National Academies Press This link opens in a new window
Created by the National Academies to publish the reports issued by the national Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Medicine, and the National Research Council, makes available more than 1,500 of its books available free online.
Oxford Scholarship Online This link opens in a new window
Offers access to thousands of academic monographs, in 19 subject areas across the humanities, social sciences, sciences, medicine, and law.
Project Gutenberg This link opens in a new window
More than 2,500 books, all in the public domain, available in basic ascii text.
Very Short Introductions This link opens in a new window
More than 600 e-books from Oxford University Press designed to offer concise and original introductions to a subject. Usually less than 200 pages, they are written by experts for a general audience.