You are here: Information Resources - Electronic Books - eBook Collections

eBook (Electronic Book) Collections

There are a growing number of ebooks which are available for staff and students of the University.

In order to use electronic books, you may need to install a small plugin via your browser or use some software like Adobe Acrobat Reader. These vary depending on where you access the titles from.

The Library's main collection of ebooks is the ebrary academic collection which includes over 30,000 titles. We also have access to MyILibrary which is a collection of around 800 selected books and DawsonERA, which is a smaller- though growing- collection.

You can cross-search within each of these three collections by using the links on this page. However you can also use our Library Catalogue to search for individual e-books, both by known author and/or title details and by keyword. If you wish to limit your catalogue search to e-books, please select more search options then select electronic books from the Collection drop-down options. Please note there is sometimes a short time lag before individual records for books added by the suppliers to the three collections appear in our catalogue.

There are also ebooks which are freely available via the world-wide web, some of the more useful collections are listed below.

eBook Collections

American memory
Historical collections from the US National Digital Library.
AMS books online
Research level books on mathematics: some books are available free, others offer individual chapters only.
Bartleby.com
Free books for students in PDF format.
Bookboon
Reference, fiction, non-fiction, and verse.
Classic reader
A large collection of free classic books by authors such as Dickens, Austen, Shakespeare and many others.
Cognet
A collection of books dealing mainly with cognitive psychology. Campus use only.
Construction Information Service
A database for construction professionals which includes the full text of a large number of technical works on construction and construction management, from government, professional bodies and trade organisations. Campus use only.
Cornell University Library digital collections
Historical collections on a wide range of topics.
Credo Reference (formerly Xreferplus)
A searchable reference library containing 100 leading reference works. Authentication required for off-campus access.
Documenting the American South
Historical collections from the University of North Carolina.
Ebrary
The Library’s main e-books subscription service, with over 30,000 books on a wide range of topics together with useful tools for working with the content. Authentication required.
Electronic text centre
A collection of over 2,000 literary works from the University of Virginia.
eScholarship editions
A collection from the Universty of California, mostly in humanities.
EU Bookshop
Official publications repository of the European Union, with thousands of free publications.
Eurostat
Official EU statistical service, with a wide range of free statistical publications as well as data tables.
Freebooks4doctors
650 books on medical topics.
Google Book Search
Searches the content of books in the Google collection; some books are available in full text, but ‘for the most part, you can browse through a number of pages of these books, typically about 20%’.
House of Commons Library Research Papers
Well-researched briefings on a wide range of topics.
Making of America
‘A digital library of primary sources in American social history’.
Mathematics textbooks
A collection compiled by George Cain of Georgia Institute of Technology.
Microsoft e-books catalog
Includes around 1500 ‘free books, though some only offer samples. You will need to download Microsoft Reader.
National Academies Press
Nearly 4,000 books available free from the combined national scientific academies of the US.
Occupational Health and Safety Information Service
A database for construction professionals which includes the full text of a large number of technical works on health and safety, from government, professional bodies and trade organisations. Authentication required.
Online books page
A collection from the University of Pennsylvania.
Oxford Scholarship Online
A cross-searchable library containing the full text of many Oxford books in the subject area of Law.
Oxford Text Archive
A collection of works in arts and humanities. Those labelled ‘get text’ are free.
Planet PDF
A free PDF ebook archive containing popular classics.
Project Gutenberg
Nearly 20,000 out of copyright US books.
PsycBOOKS
A full-text database of more than 1,700 books and 22,000 book chapters in the American Psychological Association’s array of quality electronic databases.
To search, click on the Health & Medicine link and select PsycBOOKS from the list.
Read print
Several thousand works of literature.
Turning the pages
‘Great books’ digitised by the British Library and including audio and images.
UK Government Publications
Parliamentary papers and many other official publications can be accessed from the Stationery Office website. However, there is also a substantial amount of material available from individual Government Departments, including:
• Cabinet Office
• DEFRA
• Department for Culture, Media and Sport
• Department for Education
• Department for Work and Pensions
• Department for Business Innovation & Skills
• Department of Health
• Foreign and Commonwealth Office
• HM Treasury
• Home Office
• Ministry of Defence

For a longer list of entirely free e-book collections, go to Free Books.
Remember also that international agencies and other quasi-governmental organisations may well offer free access to their publications – for example, Unesco, World Bank, etc.

Submitted by: