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UMASS AMHERST LIBRARIES EXPANDS ELECTRONIC BOOK COLLECTION
NEWS RELEASE: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATE: 2/25/09CONTACT: LESLIE SCHALER, COMMUNICATIONS ASST., (413) 545-0162
EXPANDS ELECTRONIC BOOK COLLECTION
Amherst, MA - The UMass Amherst Libraries has expanded its rich collection of electronic books with the addition of two new databases, Springer E-Books and ebrary Academic Complete.
Springer E-books includes over 13,000 full text books, major works, monographs, and journal articles from the science publisher Springer, from 2005 to 2008. Aside from mathematics and science, it also covers subjects in the humanities, law, architecture, and other fields. Individual title records are available in the UMass Amherst Library catalog, and the SpringerLink site. Items in SpringerLink to which the UMass Amherst community has access are denoted with a green box.
Ebrary Academic Complete consists of 42,000 scholarly and popular books in full text, from 1990 to the present, covering a wide assortment of subjects from agriculture to technology, and including fine arts, music, literature, and more. The "ebrary reader," in conjunction with an ebrary account, enables users to mark text and make notations, create a bookshelf with subject folders, save text and title lists, and print. The ebrary reader, a Java application, also has a text to speech feature. Individual records for all the book titles in ebrary are included in the UMass Amherst Library catalog.
Electronic books are used by faculty and students, and particularly online students. Professor Art Clifford, one of the designers of the Certificate of Online Journalism feels the Library has a huge role to play in accessing materials for online students. "The Library has been a lifesaver in getting us online titles quickly. You don't have to catalog and shelve them; it's sort of like magic. A lot of my students are overseas and it would take weeks for the books to get there. I don't know any other way we can get materials to people as quickly."
The Library's e-Book collection is available to anyone using a campus computer by going to www.library.umass.edu and clicking on databases. A link to the e-Book collection is at the bottom of the page. E-Books are also available from the library catalog. Registration with a campus email address may be required.
From off-campus, because of licensing agreements, most online resources are only available to students, faculty, and staff of the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Users can login from off-campus using their OIT account.
For more information, contact Leslie Button, Associate Director for Collection Services, at 545-6845 or button@library.umass.edu.
Last Edited: 3 March 2009
