E-Book Resources

Collections of Ebooks available through CUNY/BC

The ACLS Humanities E-Book Project is a digital collection of over 2,800 full-text titles offered by the ACLS in collaboration with twenty learned societies, nearly 100 contributing publishers, and librarians at the University of Michigan's Scholarly Publishing Office. The result is an online, fully searchable collection of high-quality books, essays, and primary sources in the Humanities, with a broad selection of subjects and fields, ranging from Women's Studies and Politics, to Literary Criticism and Religion. Allows users to save and email citations, as well as link directly to titles.

These reference books from the American Psychological Association (APA) provide a one-stop shop for both overviews and in-depth analyses of a variety of sub-fields within psychology. Individual chapters are available in PDF format. Titles include:

  • APA Addiction Syndrome Handbook
  • APA Educational Psychology Handbook
  • APA Handbook of Behavior Analysis
  • APA Handbook of Counseling Psychology
  • APA Handbook of Ethics in Psychology
  • APA Handbook of Industrial and Organizational Psychology
  • APA Handbook of Psychology, Religion and Spirituality
  • APA Handbook of Research Methods in Psychology

ebrary is an information delivery service that features a growing selection of more than 36,000 titles from more than 200 leading academic, STM, and professional publishers.

ebrary allows an unlimited number users of any one book in the database at any given time.  Portions of books may be downloaded as PDF files, and entire books may be downloaded and read using the Adobe Digital Editions reader.

Access to the full text of reference, scholarly, and professional books. EBSCO eBooks are digital full-text versions of books such as reference works, scholarly monographs, literature and fiction (at Brooklyn College, almost 6,000 titles), and 3,400 publicly-accessible titles. 

EBSCO books are viewable online and may be checked out and viewed or downloaded using the Adobe Digital Editions reader.  The reader is available free at http://www.adobe.com/products/digitaleditions/.  The list of compatible devices is available at http://blogs.adobe.com/digitalpublishing/supported-devices

Access to the full text of reference, scholarly, and professional books. EBSCO eBooks are digital full-text versions of books such as reference works, scholarly monographs, literature and fiction (at Brooklyn College, almost 6,000 titles), and 3,400 publicly-accessible titles. 

EBSCO books are viewable online and may be checked out and viewed or downloaded using the Adobe Digital Editions reader.  The reader is available free at http://www.adobe.com/products/digitaleditions/.  The list of compatible devices is available at http://blogs.adobe.com/digitalpublishing/supported-devices

Gale Virtual Reference Library delivers a wealth of eBook reference content in a database format, including multi-volume encyclopedias, biographical collections, business plan handbooks, company history compilations, consumer health references, and specialized reference sources on a variety of subjects.

Palgrave Connect offers an ebook Collection with over 9,500 titles offered in the Humanities, the Social Sciences and Business.  These ebooks ebooks are available in collections organized by year of publication and by discipline.

Springer’s eBook Collection covers the subject areas: Architecture, Design and Arts; Behavioral Sciences; Biomedical and Life Sciences; Business & Economics; Chemistry & Material Science; Computer Science; Earth & Environmental Science; Engineering; Humanities, Social Science & Law; Mathematics & Statistics; Medicine; Physics & Astronomy; Professional and Applied Computing.

Features of BC Ebook Collections

Subscription Ebook Collections Features
Subscription Ebook Collections What subjects are Covered? Can you Read Online? What can you Print? What can you Download? Details: How to Download Requires Installation of Specialized Software?
ACLS Humanities Ebook  Humanities Yes--through CUNY Catalog or Ebooks Page No Printing No Download capabilities No Download capabilities  No
Ebrary Broad scope of subjects: from technology to law, fine arts, etc. Yes--through CUNY Catalog or Ebooks Page Can print a maximum of 60 pages per session After signing in to Ebrary account, either a part of the text (up to 60 pages or a chapter at a time) or the whole book for limited amount of time Option 1. For partial download of a portion of the ebook, sign into Ebrary account and then can download up to 60 pages as a PDF. Option 2. For full download of the entire ebook, sign in and then use Adobe Digital Editions software to access the full text for a limited time Yes--see Option 2--Adobe Digital Editions (ADE)
EbscoHost (formerly NetLibrary) Broad scope of subjects: from literature to reference, etc. Yes, but sometimes if another patron is viewing/using a book it will become inaccessible.       Available through CUNY Catalog or Ebooks page Can print a maximum of 60 pages per session After signing in to Ebsco account, can download the whole book to Adobe Digital Editions for a limited amount of time After signing in to Ebsco account, download options become available. You can download the full text for a limited time (1-7 days). It says it will save as a PDF, but it actually saves as an .acsm file, and only opens with Adobe Digital Editions Yes--Adobe Digital Editions (ADE)
Gale Virtual Reference Library Collection of Reference materials with a broad scope Yes--through CUNY Catalog or Ebooks Page Yes--parts/sections or chapters at a time Will download whatever is displayed on the screen as a PDF (no clear rule about page limit, seems random and about 3 pages at a time) Can download small parts of books as a PDF (one encyclopedia entry, etc.) No 
SpringerLink Arts, Humanities and Sciences Yes--through CUNY Catalog or Ebooks Page Texts with a green square can be printed in full, one chapter at a time Anything to which we have access can be downloaded in full text as a PDF, one chapter at a time  All content can be downloaded as a PDF  No

Opening an Ebook from the Catalog while Off-Campus

Ebooks in the CUNY Catalog

Did you know that almost all of our ebooks can be found via the CUNY library catalog? You should be prompted to log in to read ebooks straight from within the catalog using your off-campus login information (the same information as you would use for library databases).

If you are off-campus and would like to browse through our ebook collections, you will need to log in first to authenticate yourself as a Brooklyn College affiliate. 

To do this, before you open an ebook collection, go to the library's home page and then click on the red lock icon on the middle left side of the page. After you enter your off-campus login information (the same information as you would use for library databases), any ebook you find can then be viewed in full from off-campus (the red lock icon should turn green once you are logged in). 

Collections of Ebooks available on the Web (no login required)

The Directory of Open Access Books organizes ebooks that are available to read free of charge on the internet. It includes books published by academic, peer reviewed books via Open Access licenses.

The Electronic Text Center at the University of Virginia Library collects SGML and XML texts and images on history, literature, and more.

950 open textbooks; search by ISBN or subject.

Google's Book Search searches the full text of books and allows you to see anything from a few short excerpts to the entire book, depending copyright restrictions and other factors. Select Full View in the results screen or advanced search to limit your search to books entirely, and freely, available online.

HathiTrust is a partnership of major research institutions and libraries working to ensure that the cultural record is preserved and accessible. There are more than sixty partners in HathiTrust, and membership is open to institutions worldwide.  There are 5,419,598 book titles and 268,899 serial titles currently digitized.

One of the best free book sites for children from 3 - 13, this collection offers some 500 contemporary and out of print books and picture books in full text and in the original language of publication. Current research and design methods presented as well as interactive demos.
The Internet Archive offers access to freely available e-books from a number of projects including Project Gutenberg and the Universal Library.

Over 3,000 books are available for free online from the National Academies Press, which publishes reports by the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Medicine, and the National Research Council.

OAPEN includes open access academic books in the Humanities and Social Sciences.

The Online Books Page indexes over 25,000 books and shorter texts available for free on the web. Listings can be searched or browsed by title, author, and subject.
Project Gutenberg, the first producer of free electronic books, has over 20,000 books available for online viewing or downloading.

SurLaLune offers over 40 eBooks, including fairy tale and folklore anthologies, critical texts, poetry and fiction.  The index is divided by subject matter and region.

Textbook Revolution is the web's source for free educational materials. All of the books are offered for free by their respective copyright holders for online viewing. Books are available on many topics, including biology, business, chemistry, earth sciences, economics, engineering, health sciences, history, mathematics, physics, and more.

The University of Adelaide's Barr Smith Library has established the University of Adelaide Press, a digital academic publisher.  The electronic editions are Open Access and free.  All titles are internationally peer-reviewed.