Students who need to access the Contexts and Comparisons guide for the Great Works courses can find it by searching the title in the library catalog. It used to be under ‘digital collections’ on the old web page. I will add a link on the English libguide.
Tag: Ebooks
Books24x7 Links In Catalog Still Not Working
Just a reminder that the links to Books24x7 titles in the catalog still don’t work. If someone needs to get to a book in Books24x7, they can still do so by going through the main link to Books24x7 on the Databases page and then search by title for the book they need. One thing that you may notice when you are in the Books24x7 database is that the feature that lets users create their own accounts to save books in folders is overridden with a “CUNY Baruch College” account (click the annotated screenshot below for a larger image showing places where this personal account info can be seen).
There isn’t a way for users to create their own accounts right now, as this setup we have is just a workaround that the vendor came up with recently to meet our request that users not have to create personal accounts just to get into the database in the first place (users should be able to click right into a book or launch a search and then decide later if they want to create a personal account where they might save things).
We have been working hard with the vendor, BCTC, and the CUNY Office of Library Services to troubleshoot the problem with the links in the catalog. We’ve also reached out for assistance on several relevant mailing lists and gotten lots of solutions that haven’t quite fixed the problem. As soon as it is fixed, expect to see a new blog post about it (and sighs of relief from Mike and me).
Problems with Books24x7 Logins
For a few weeks now, we have been working with Books24x7 support to figure out why direct access to that resource requires a user to login with a Books24x7 account first. This problem has cropped up in the past and been solved; it appears to have returned again. Since this is taking longer than expected to get fixed, here are some workarounds.
Accessing a book via the link for it in a catalog record
If you try to click on the link in a catalog record to an item in the Books24x7 collection (the link is usually labeled “Click here for the electronic version”), you’ll get this dead end page from Books24x7:
To get around this, you’ll need to go back to our “Databases” page, use the link there to go in the front door of Books24x7. When you do, though, you’ll see a Books24x7 page requiring you to login with your Books24x7 login or register for a login. You must login or register/login to get past this page:
Once you have logged in, you can either use the search box in the main Books24x7 interface to find that book from the catalog you wanted to access or you can go back to the catalog record (as long as it is the same browser) and click the link there to go direct to the book (it should work once you’ve logged in to Books24x7 in that browser).
Accessing the main Books24x7 interface via the Databases page link
If you haven’t logged in with a Books24x7 login yet, you’ll need to do so with your existing Books24x7 login or one that can create via the “Register” link on this page:
EBSCO’s Ebook Academic Collection trial
We have a trial to EBSCO’s Ebook Academic Collection trial until June 30, 2012.
This is a new product from EBSCO, comparable to the collection we have from ebrary. Like ebrary, there are over 70,000 titles (only about 51,000 for this trial), unlimited simultaneous users and downloads. Because this is a trial, we will not add the records to the catalog, but if we were to subscribe, they would be added.
We will be actively comparing this product with ebrary’s so please share your comments in the comments below or email me directly. In particular, I would like comments on ease of downloading, search capabilities, on-screen display, marking, saving and emailing capabilities, and any other feature you may consider important.
NetLibrary Is Now eBook Collection (EBSCOhost)
Now that netLibrary is fully part of EBSCO, it has been renamed as eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). You’ll find it listed under that new name on the databases page and in LibGuides.
Downloadable books from ebrary
ebrary now allows their books to be downloaded to reader devices. This is just a short introduction to the download function. More instructions will be forthcoming but since we are already seeing some questions, here is some information.
You will notice a DOWNLOAD button next to the ebrary Reader button if the book is open or under the title if searching for a title from within ebrary.
The download options are as follows:
– by chapter and/or up to 60 pages: this will download a PDF copy of the text; if you need more than 60 pages, you need to logoff and back on. This is a PDF so the quality in the reader tends to not be the best. The PDF can then be moved to a device. The PDF is yours forever.
– by the whole book. This will download to Adobe Digital Edition. Users must have their own log-in to Adobe Digital Edition as well. On their devices they must also have Adobe Digital Editions or Bluefire on the iPad/iPhone/iPod platforms. This will check the book out for 14 days. With ebrary since we have unlimited simultaneous users, multiple users can have the book checked out at any one time. I do not think we have Adobe Digital Editions on our public computers at this time.
If you have specific questions, please email me so I can address them.
netLibrary and EBSCOhost Books
As you may already know, EBSCO bought netLibrary about a year ago. Since then, they have been working to migrate netLibrary content onto the EBSCOhost platform.
This transition is almost over and they have alerted us that in the next few days users accessing a netLibrary title will be seamlessly forwarded to EBSCOhost.
There shouldn’t be any problems, but please do let me know if you encounter any.
Patron-driven acquisition at Baruch
The Newman Library has started a patron-driven acquisition experiment with about 2,700 books from Coutts’ MyILibrary. The records for these books were carefully selected according to subject matter, publishers, years of publication, price and other variables to give us a current list of titles we do not own but that might be of interest to our users. A purchase is triggered the second time someone looks at the e-book.
How does this work? A user finds an e-book they are interested in in the catalog. They’ll click on the link which will take them to MyILibrary where they will see a Summary page with title and citation information, a brief summary, and a table of contents. This is free viewing. If they go on and take a look inside the book, this will count as a view, whether they look at it for 10 seconds or read the entire e-book. After a second view, the e-book is automatically purchased, and we will own it.
Every month new titles will be added and older ones removed. I will have access to the usage statistics.
The records for these titles have been added to the catalog but they look exactly like any other e-book record, and for obvious reasons, I cannot give an example to look at.
This is just one small part of our total monographic acquisition. It is not intended to replace our regular ordering procedures, but to supplement it.
It is hoped that this will alert us to gaps we might have in our collection, give users the ability to access immediately material of interest to them that we do not already own, and guarantee that there is already a verifiable interest in the e-books we purchase.
Ebooks MARC Records – possible duplicates
As we purchased some ebooks collection by packages, not by individual titles, it is possible that you may find duplicate records in CUNY+ from different vendors (books 24×7, ebrary, credo, Gale Virtual reference, etc.). Our initial thought was to suppress duplicate records to one record. However, as these collections are constantly updated, titles may be deleted in the near future. We decide to keep multiple records for now.
So, if in case you find duplicate records in CUNY+, it is not a mistake. Please let me know if it occurs to you.