Experience the Excellence of Ebrary!

Part I:  Ebook Download Options for Offline Access!

From www.ebrary.com

Have you ever encountered Internet problems just as you’re starting to read that critical eBook for your final research paper?  Well, take heart, my friend, because now ebrary offers you download options for offline access!  With our Library's ever-expanding ebrary collection currently offering more than 78,000 ebook titles, the option to download these materials for offline access is truly an amazing opportunity!  It’s as simple as logging on to ebrary, finding the eBooks you need, and then choosing between the two offline access options.

How to Log on to ebrary 

• From the Library's home page, click on the Online Library Resources link found near the top right of the page. 
• Click on the eBooks & eReference Resources link. 
• Now that you have reached our Library's eBook & eReference Resources page, click on the Ebrary link. 
• Enter your My.Saint Leo username and password to access our Library's ebrary collection.

Ebrary's Two Offline Access Options

The Ebrary Support Center offers detailed instructions about these two options.  You may also click on the "Learn More..." links below to be directed to this information.   

OPTION 1: 

·         “Create an image PDF of a specific chapter or page range"

Learn more...

Quick Reminders:

• Maximum of 60 pages may be downloaded into PDF form.
• Accessible on the Kindle.
• To read the file, all that is necessary is the PDF viewer you typically use such as Adobe Reader. 
• Please note that typical eReader options such as selecting specific text, searching, highlighting, or taking notes are not possible on many PDF viewers. 

How Do I Do This?

• Once you have found the eBook in ebrary that you wish to create an image for, you will then click on the Download button in QuickView. 

• This will open a window which will then allow you to choose this option and either set the chapter or the page parameters for the section of the eBook you wish to create an image PDF for:

• Voilà!  You can now read your materials offline using any PDF viewer such as Adobe Reader.

OPTION 2:

“Download an entire document as an e-book in Adobe Digital Editions"
 Learn more... 

Quick Reminders: 

• To begin, it is first necessary to install Adobe Digital Editions which is available for free online for both Windows and Mac.
• NOT accessible on the Kindle.

How Do I Do This?

• Once you have found an eBook in ebrary that you wish to download in its entirety, click on the Download button in QuickView. 

• This will open a window which will then allow you to choose this option.

• You may choose to immediately Open with Adobe Digital Editions or Save file to open later.

Learn more... about Adobe Digital Editions, including how to transfer your documents to iOS devices (Apple's mobile operating system including the iPhone, iPod touch, iPad) and non-iOS devices (but not including the Kindle).  This involves creating an Adobe ID that authorizes your computer to allow these materials to be transferred.

Be sure to tune in tomorrow as we continue our journey into the "Excellence of Ebrary"!

                            - Kerry Vash, Online Librarian, Blog Co-editor -

 All Aboard the eBook Train! 

Tablets & eReaders Not Required!   

From www.makeuseof.com

An enlightening MakeUseOf article by Yaara Lancet, "Quick Guide:  How To Enjoy eBooks Without A Tablet Or An eReader”, shares new ways of exploring eBooks. 

As the popularity of eBooks soars to new heights, there’s certainly no denying that the opportunity to have nearly instant access to your favorite book is a marvel for readers everywhere. Yet many of us feel removed from the sweeping sensation of eBooks because we don’t have eReaders or tablets. What we may not realize is that these devices are no longer the only channels by which we can enjoy the splendor of eBooks:  your computer offers many of these same opportunities!  Even better, as a member of our Saint Leo University community, you have the opportunity to view over 250,000 eBooks available to you online from Daniel A. Cannon Memorial Library.

Here is some more information about accessing our amazing eBook collection:

Our Library’s eBook Collection

Click here to learn about all of the full-text databases that comprise our eBook and eReference collection.  Once you enter your Saint Leo login and password, you have instant access to e-books online, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week!

Click here to learn more about eBook options available through our Open Access Collections - no login or password needed!

eBook Apps Available Online For Your Computer

In addition, check out these fantastic apps Lancet recommends:

Nook for PC/Mac/Web

While Barnes & Noble’s eReader, the Nook, is sold as both a simple eReader ($99) and a tablet ($199, but look out for sales where prices are often reduced to $179), as well as other variations,  these devices are not necessary to appreciate the variety of offerings at the Nook Store.  Nook Reader is also accessible for PC, Mac, and via a Web version congruent with IE, Firefox, Safari and Chrome.  All of these versions are free and allow you to read eBooks directly on your desktop. To experience Nook products, you must first create a BN.com account. Click here to return to the article where you can learn more about Nook eBook options available on your computer and find the links to download the apps. 

Kindle for PC/Mac/Cloud

The ever popular Kindle, Amazon’s pride and joy, offers several eReader versions from the basic Kindle ($79) to the more advanced Kindle Fire tablet (which is now sold out with speculation of an upgraded version to be released in the early fall) to the ultimate Kindle DX ($379), as well as other variations.  However, Kindle books can also be appreciated without any of these devices.  As long as you have an Amazon account, these free app options are available to you: Kindle Cloud Reader, “compatible with Firefox, Chrome and Safari” and “the Kindle desktop app for Windows or Mac.”  Click here to return to the article where you can learn more about Kindle eBook options available on your computer and find the links to download the apps.

Kobo for Windows/Mac/Web

Another popular eReader, Kobo, also provides “its own set of desktop and web apps for reading eBooks.”  Although Lancet describes the app as “the least responsive and intuitive”, she also declares that “it makes up for these faults with a slick reading interface”.  To begin getting books, a Kobo account must first be created.  Click here to return to the article where you can learn more about all the options available through Kobo's eReading apps.

Calibre for Windows/Mac/Linux

MakeUseOf and Lancet sing high praises about this eReader and have even created their own freely downloadable guide.  More than just an eReader, Calibre is also an “eBook organizer which you can use to read books from almost any eBook provider out there, and in almost any available format, including ePub” (electronic publications).  In addition, Calibre allows you to “convert eBooks to different formats.”  Click here to return to the article where you can learn more about Calibre's options and find the link to download the apps for Windows/Mac/Linux.   

Booki.sh for Web

For easy eBook reading via your browser, especially anything involving ePUBs, check out the web app, Booki.sh!  Supportive of “ePubs as well as other formats”, Booki.sh can be used “to browse local stores for eBooks” or to “upload your own ePUB files for easy reading.”  Able to be used “both online and offline”, Booki.sh “supports Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and IE, with Opera support coming soon.”  In addition, Booki.sh can be used for reading “on your iOS, Android or Blackberry devices.”  While Lancet mentions that this reader is “not as sophisticated as others”, she asserts that it offers all the “basic” functioning of any “desktop eReader”.  Click here to learn more about the many possibilities Booki.sh offers.
                                                 - Kerry Vash, Online Librarian, Blog Co-editor - 

Who moved the newspapers?

We now offer LexisNexis Academic to our on- and off-campus students, faculty, and staff. However, NewsBank “America’s Newspapers,” will become an on campus-only resource beginning July 1, 2012.

SLU students, faculty and staff members have off-campus access to the following newspaper bundles:

      ·         EBSCOhost AP NewsMonitor Collection

      ·         EBSCOhost Newspaper Source Plus
      ·         EBSCOhost Regional Business News
      ·         LexisNexis Academic News (1980-present)
      ·         ProQuest News and Newspapers

In addition, most of the general databases include some access to selected newspapers. When in doubt, search for the name of a newspaper in the AtoZ Journal List to find out if the library has access to that newspaper anywhere on the site. (There will be links provided in the results list.)

Looking for the Miami-Herald online? It is exclusively digitized by Newsbank, so if you need an item from that newspaper, please contact the reference librarians on duty by phone (1.800.359.5945) or email (reference.desk@saintleo.edu), or, simply use the Document Delivery service’s “Article Request Form.”

LexisNexis Database Now Available Off-Campus

Cannon Memorial Library Director Brent Short is pleased to announce that all Saint Leo University students, staff, faculty, and administrators, whether located on the main campus, a remote site, or online only, now have access to LexisNexis.

You will find it listed in the Databases section of the library site.  Use it to access over 10,000 news, business and legal sources, news coverage with deep back files and up-to-the-minute stories in national and regional newspapers, wire services, broadcast transcripts, international news and non-English language sources.

Use the included LexisNexis Company Dossier module to retrieve detailed company information and financial performance measures or identify and compare companies by matching specific criteria.

This database also provides access to the renowned Shepard's® Citations Service for all federal and states court cases back to 1789.

Treasure Trove of Websites from CHOICE Reviews(R), part 2 of 2

CHOICE® “is a publishing unit of the Association of College &
Research Libraries, a division of the American Library Association." Here is part 2 of my list of some of the websites recommended for academic research in the past few months. I hope you find them both useful and interesting.

Science, Nutrition, and Technology
Neuroscience Information Network provides "online data, materials, and tools" in the neurosciences, including a 15,200-word lexicon, a registry of vetted electronic resources, tutorials, webinars, a wiki, a blog, and more. Search results appear in a sections, so read the screen carefully.

The USDA's Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2010, is the seventh edition of governmental dietary guidelines to date. The site provides options for downloading the entire report or just selected chapters. It also links to the USDA's Nutrition Evidence Library. The "Backgrounder" section provides the historical context of the guidelines. The site is useful for students, researchers, consumers, educators, and policy makers alike.

A consortium of 12 US and UK botanical and natural history libraries created the Biodiversity Heritage Library of 46,000+ titles and 90,000+ volumes. Materials date from 1450. It is a patron driven collection, items being added to this digital collection only when requested by library users. Multiple download options are provided, along with a wiki, blog, and tutorials. It has a feature that allows users to search for material and bibliography complete with links to the full-text.

Social and Behavioral Sciences
The U.S. Census Bureau's newly revised website is an excellent source of data about the social and economic conditions in America and now includes the 2010 census data online. The Population Finder tool on the left side of the home page is an easy way to locate and compare down to the state, county, and city level. Check out the daily factoids in the Stat of the Day section or use the Interactive Map to "explore Census data through a mashup of population and economic data." See also: The American Community Survey website for access to additional related data.

EVIA Digital Archive Project of the Indiana University and the University of Michegan "features unedited, annotated, ethnographic field video" spanning decades and supporting "visual anthropology, ethnography, ethnomusicology, and related areas." The site allows depositors to sign up "to create and annotate collections" and includes "depositor biographies, collection outlines, and transcripts." Users need to create a personal account on the site and accept the terms of use.

Global Voices is an aggregator site developed by Rebecca MacKinnon and Ethan Zuckerman when they were Harvard fellows. The site states it is "an international community of bloggers who report on blogs and citizen media from around the world." Volunteers translate the content contributed from more than 30 countries. Register for updates by country or topic via RSS feeds, have summaries emailed to you, or follow on Facebook or Twitter.

ThomasNet is the free online version of the print reference series Thomas Register of American Manufacturers last in print in 2006. It covers more than 650,000 companies and allows business majors and researchers to locate information such as locations served by individual companies, products offered, and certifications held. Particularly useful for those studying or researching in the areas of "industrial or mechanical design, industrial engineering, or manufacturing."

There are many times you might need access to free risk management and business climate/economic data. In addition to the any of several business databases from the library, you might want to examine one of these recommended sites: (1) Coface--Country Risk and Economic Research, (2) the World Bank Open Data site, or (3) the Market Research Library.

Humanities, Fine Arts, Literature, and History
The library at the University of Adelaide, New South Wales, Australia, has assembled an impressive collection of open-access and Project Gutenberg eBooks called "eBooks at Adelaide." The books have standardized ePub, html formatting; are searchable by author, title, and subject; and individual chapters can be downloaded, read, saved, and/or printed. New titles are added regularly. The list of titles is not meant to be "definitive," but intended for pleasure reading with a focus on the literary classics. The collection is edited by Steve Thomas, senior systems analyst for the university library.

The Archives of American Art, part of the Smithsonian Institution, contains "over 16 million primary source materials consisting of diaries, letters, manuscripts, photographs, films, audio recordings, video recordings, and many more artifact documenting American culture for the past 200-plus years." Access newly added content by the Recently Digitized Collections link. A single search box on the home page allows you to search the collection by keyword, or explore the collection by category, topic, or type.

An excellent resource for Holocaust education, Yad Vashem's Digital Collections includes 150,000+ items in its catalog, a photo archive of 120,000+ photos, and a central databse of victims' names with more than 5M records. Use Quick Links to locate video testimonies of survivors and stories of some who saved Jews during the Holocaust. Vashem's mission is "to collect, examine, preserve, and publish testimony of the Shoah, and the heroism called forth, so that archival documentation may bear witness; and to make this material available to the public to safeguard memory for future generations." 

Treasure Trove of Websites from CHOICE Reviews®, Part 1 of 2

CHOICE® “is a publishing unit of the Association of College &
Research Libraries, a division of the American Library Association. Here are some of the websites recommended for academic research in the past few months that I thought you might find useful and interesting.

History

Digital Gallery, from the National Library of Scotland.The site includes such things as rare books, engravings, photos, audio clips, and transcripts. For the GIS crowd, the Maps link on the site contains 20K+ enlargeable historical maps of Scotland.

Army Heritage Collections Online, from the US Army Heritage and Education Center. The site provides easy access to Civil War and WWII photos, interview transcripts from the Senior Officer Oral History Program, and other US Army Military History Institute archival materials. Links to other military sites are provided, along with various finding tools, types of searches, a site map, and a “What’s New” section.

Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, from the National Digital Newspaper Program in partnership with the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress. Not only does this site index American newspapers from 1690 to the present, it provides digital access to more than a million newspaper pages from 1860 to the present. To date, 23 of the 50 states and territories have provided content through two-year grants to digitize 100,000 pages each from a representative or state library’s microfilm collection. Free and easy to use.

Science and Technology

Chemical Blogspace, by Egon Willighagen, Uppsala University. This is an aggregator of chemical and bio-chemical blogs from around the world, permitting scientists and researchers to contribute “letters to the editor”-style commentary on published works, as well as “the option to report scientific misconduct” (from CHOICE Review January 2012).

Interaction-Design.org, edited by Mads Soegaard et al. The site includes a freely downloadable Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction, along with other free educational materials for research into human-computer interaction/interaction design.

National Pesticide Information Center, from Oregon State University and US EPA. If you are interested in “pesticide use, exposure, environmental fate, and crisis management” (from CHOICE Review January 2012), this is the site for you. Information encompasses bibliographies, fact sheets, research and annual reports, and various free publications.

TechCrunch, founded by Michael Arrington in 2005. Unlike Gizmodo, EndGadget, or CNET, this site provides both current digital technology news and company profiles in a single search. The home page aggregates a continuously updated digital tech news feed.

Images, from the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). This site provides access to free images extracted from NCBI’s full-text biomedical and life sciences literature, using search parameters developed for NCBI’s well-known PubMed database [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/]. Results display as a relevance-ranked summary with thumbnail images and links to full-text from other sites.

Law

United State Code, from the Office of the Law Revision Counsel of the US House of Representatives. (You will find US Code Annotated in the library’s subscription to Westlaw Campus Edition.)  The site is authoritative, of high quality and reliability, easily searchable for both beginning and advanced users, and makes the digital US Code accessible to everyone.

Education

Children’s Picture Book Database at Miami University, by Valerie Ubbes.  See also: Carol Hurst’s Children’s Literature Web Site. More than 5,000 children’s picture books have been indexed and abstracted, making it easy for teachers, parents, and librarians to identify and select children’s picture books for K-12 curricular units by concept, topic and/or skill.

Who Moved My Newspaper!?!

You now will find access to the New York Times in the ProQuest newspaper package “Newsstand Complete,"which now includes the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, and USA Today, with online full-text back to the 1980s.

Other newspaper sources available from Cannon Memorial Library include ProQuest's National Newspaper Core, EBSCOhost's Newspaper Source Plus and Regional Business News, and NewsBank.

So, whether you're looking for local news, regional news, business news, national news, or international news, you will find it in full-text online at your library.