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eBooks - How to Find and Download

Instructions for finding and downloading e-books from various vendors.

Introduction

ProQuest's eBook Central contains over 150,000 eBooks from a wide ranges of academic and university press publishers. The individual books are also searchable in the library catalog.

Search eBooks

It’s easy to begin a new search from wherever you are in eBook Central. Look for the Search box at the top of the page, or the Search link in the global navigation. The image below shows an example of search results. 

The keyword is highlighted in the search results, and there’s a short description to give you a bit more information about the book, including whether it is currently “Available,” “Available on request,” or “In use.” You can refine your searching by using search filters such as Year Published, Subject, Language, and Author. Download the book, read it online, see the Table of Contents and more, and add the book to your bookshelf. Chapter Results provide the top chapters from the most relevant books.

Read Online

Use the numbers in the images to find corresponding descriptions in the tables below in order to learn about the various functions of ProQuest's online reader. 


1. Book Details View your print and copy allowances.
2. Annotations Icon View your highlights, notes and bookmarks.
3. Search Within Book Type your search term into the search box, making sure to put phrases in quotes. Search results are displayed with frequency bars next to each chapter. Select the chapter name to see the results per page and contextual snippets of text.
4. Book Download Downloading a book is an easy 3-step process to computers, tablets, and phones.
5. Chapter Download Download a chapter to PDF. Text is searchable and selectable, and a citation is included. Pages included in your Chapter Download are counted as part of your overall print allowances. 
6. Copy Copy the whole page by selecting the copy icon in the navigation toolbar. To copy text within a page, select your text and use the copy icon in the pop-up menu.
7. Print Create a PDF of a page, or a range of pages that can be printed or saved, and which includes a citation of the book. Printed pages are counted as part of your overall print allowances. 
8. Add to Bookshelf  Save this book to your online bookshelf. If you have already added the title, the icon will be disabled.
9. Share Link Copy a URL to this page in the book, which you may share with others at your institution. 
10. Cite Create a citation from your choice of styles: APA, Chicago/Turabian - Notes-Bibliography, Chicago/Turabian - Author-Date, Harvard, MLA, or Vancouver. If you have a preferred citation style, you may set that preference in Settings.

 


11. Search Terms by Chapter and Page Expand the Table of Contents to see search terms by chapter and page and click in the contextual snippet of text to navigate to that page.
12. Zoom Options Zoom in (+), zoom out (-), fit to width, or fit to page.
13. Go To Page To navigate to a specific page in the book, click on the top of page number and enter your desired page.
14. Previous/Next Move backward or forward through a book one page at a time.
15. Settings Reset your password, change your default citation style, and more.

Download

ProQuest Ebook Central offers flexible options for downloading content. Download the book to computers, tablets, and phones. Simply select your device in the first step, and we’ll guide you through the rest!

If you’re using a laptop or desktop, you need Adobe Digital Editions, a free program that is different than Adobe Reader. A free Adobe ID is also required to transfer the ebook to another device, but not if you’re just reading it on the same computer.

To download to iOS and Android devices, you need Bluefire Reader, which is free from the App Store and Google Play. You need an Adobe ID to use Bluefire Reader.

Print

The number of pages you can copy and print from ProQuest eBooks is based on the number of pages in the book. 

  • Online Allowances (per book, per user session)
    • Copy = 15%
      • Copying multiple selections from a page counts as one copy
    • Print = 30%
      • Print to paper or print to PDF (aka chapter download)
  • Offline allowances (from ADE or Bluefire, once you’ve full-downloaded)
    • Copy = 10%
    • Print = 10%

The “Details” left panel shows the full range of copy and print limits for a book: