Tutorial: Finding and using ebooks
Channel: CSB/SJU Libraries
Date: 2021-11-12

In addition to printed books, the library has licensed access to eBooks from a variety of vendors.  In this video, you’ll learn how to use our catalog to find and use eBooks.  

First, go to the library website: https://www.csbsju.edu/libraries - you can find this from the main campus website by clicking the three bars and using the “Tools” link. 

In the search box type the title of the book and the last name of the author. For example: Karl Rahner: Theology and Philosophy Kilby 

Often times, you will see a “View eBook” link from the main results screen, but I recommend you click the title of the book first and look at the full record. There are cases where we have multiple versions of the same eBook, and you can select the one you want 

In this case, if you expand the “Access Online” link, the screen shows us that this eBook is from a database called “Ebook Central Academic Complete” which comes from a vendor called ProQuest.  At this point, since it’s the only option, Click “view eBook” to connect to the resource. 

This will open up a new tab, typically, and present a landing page for the eBook. 

If you connect from off-campus, you are required to log in using your campus credentials.  

There’s a lot of information about the book on this screen, including the nature of the license – note that it says we have unlimited access to this book.  That means we can have any number of people from our campus reading the book online at the same time.  

Click “Read Online” to start reading the book. 

If you’re looking for a particular chapter, you can see the table of contents on the left, or you can search for a word in the text by typing in the box at the left. For example, if you want to see if there’s a mention of the theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar in the text, you might type “Balthasar” and peruse the bars which vary in length according to the number of times your search term is mentioned.   

It seems that chapter 7, the theory of the anonymous Christian, has several mentions of the term, so that might be a good one to look at.  Expanding the chapter that shows the search term in context and allows you to jump to that point in the text.  In this case, I’d probably want to read pages 116 to 119. 

Besides reading online, you have the option to download the whole book or download a PDF chapter.  Some functionality requires additional setup.  Contact the library if you need help with this. 

There may be eBooks that have multiple links. In that case, either will be fine to use.   

Some of the platforms include Fulcrum which hosts the ACLS Humanities E-Book collection, CREDO Reference, Oxford (which has Handbooks, Reference material, and scholarly books), Gale Virtual Reference Library, JSTOR and others. We have a lot of options when it comes to eBooks! 

Thank you for watching this library tutorial.  Please visit our website for more information.