Ask A Librarian for help finding sources, narrowing or expanding your topic, and more!
This page is for faculty who are looking for no/low-cost alternatives for using library and open-access eBooks and eTextbooks. It may also be appropriate for students looking for online books to use to brush-up on a topic.
These suggestions apply to all eResources that you use to support your teaching, including: eBooks, streaming videos, and other items from the library's collection, periodical articles from library databases, open-access textbooks and Open Educational Resources, and other online resources (e.g. YouTube videos and websites).
Link students to their program Research Guide (curated lists of best databases, search tips, and training).
If you have pre-selected course readings from library databases or websites:
Follow Copyright & Fair Use guidelines when posting or distributing all content to students. Limit access to only students in your course.
Collaborate with your subject librarian to:
Open educational resources (OER's) allow faculty and students copyright-free access to educational materials, including many no- or low-cost textbooks. For a comprehensive list of finding aids for OER's and textbooks, see the Open Textbook Projects guide. Listed below are a few of the library's favorite resources for finding open textbooks:
You can search by keyword for an eBook in the Library Catalog.
To search the library's collections of eBooks, use the eBook search express form or the eBooks search tab on the library homepage.
From a list, click a title to view the eBook catalog record. Look for a local note that lists the number of users for that book. If none is available, follow the "Connect to" link into the database record to see the number of simultaneous users.
Your next step depends on the number of simultaneous users available for the eBook you want to use. See the section, "Simultaneous users", below.
If unlimited users are available for an eBook, you may elect to link students to the eBook directly within your World Classroom / Canvas course page.
From the catalog record, follow the "Connect to" link and capture the URL for the target eBook. It should contain the library's proxy server string, https://library3.webster.edu/login?url= (There are no spaces between ‘url=’ and the url for the book.) This string will prompt users to log in to library eResources to access it.
If there is a limited number of simultaneous users available for an eBook, it may be difficult for all students in a course to link directly to the item in the library database. Note that there may also be limits on the number of pages that Webster University users may download or print. Please consult your subject/liaison librarian or your international campus librarian for more options for making eBook content easily accessible to your students. In addition to information about the eBook and your course(s), please discuss the answers to the following questions (and possibly others) with your librarian: