PR2005 Jun 8

Brooks-Cork Library Offers Anywhere/Anytime Access to Academic eBook Collection

eBooks can be Searched and Borrowed Over Internet

Tuscaloosa, AL, June 8,,2005. The Brooks-Cork Library offers students and faculty 24/7 access to information by offering a collection of over 7000 eBooks from NetLibrary.   eBooks are full-text electronic versions of published books that library patrons can search, borrow, read, and return over the Internet.

The Brooks-Cork Library serves over 8000 students in Shelton State’s widely dispersed student body, eBooks are available to users of the Brooks-Cork Library at any terminal on campus and from personal computers via the Internet. Robust search technology allows users to quickly search across all the eBooks in the collection to identify the reputable published sources of greatest interest at any point in time. Users can search across the entire eBook collection for authors, titles, or keywords, and they can search within eBooks for keywords and phrases. eBooks are available for checkout and are automatically checked back into the collection when the checkout period expires, making the eBook available for another user.

“We are excited to have this type of technology available for students and faculty. It means that reliable information from accepted publishers is available when and where students and faculty want it. Our eBook collection from NetLibrary supplements the print collection of books as well as the other electronic information sources we provide on campus,” said Dr. Deborah Grimes, Director of Library Services. “Since eBooks are accessible to anyone day or night via the Internet, students unable to use normal library hours will still be able to access these resources.”

Brooks-Cork Library eBook titles range in scope from Algebra Demystified to The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to The Nursing Experience, in core academic areas of science, social science, and the humanities to specialized study in business, education, nursing, computer science, and medicine. As an added feature, the Houghton Mifflin 4th. Edition of The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language is embedded into NetLibrary eBooks. Faculty, staff, students, and other users can obtain dictionary definitions simply by clicking on a word in the dictionary search window.

To access eBooks available in the Brooks-Cork Library, users on campus may go directly to http://www.netlibrary.com/ or follow the links from the library’s home page (www.sheltonstate.edu/library) to the Library Catalog and then to the eBook tab. To access eBooks from off campus, users must first establish a free account at any workstation on campus and set up a personal ID and password. Once this account is established, it can be accessed from any workstation on or off campus. To further make these resources easy to find, links to individual eBook titles are also included in all search features of the Library Catalog, so that eBooks and traditional books can be located in one simple search.