How do I access e-books from Sherlock?

How you access e-books through Sherlock depends on which of our vendors supplies the book. When you click on “view online” the link will take you to a different platform. Detailed below are instructions for each platform you might come across and what you need to do to download or view the e-book in your browser.

If you’re looking at Taylor and Francis or Wiley, you can download PDFs of the whole book or a section or read them in your browser. If you’re looking at Oxford University Press, Duke, Cambridge University Press, or JSTOR, you can only download sections of the books as PDFs (so you can download the whole book but it will be in sections), and can view the sections in your browser. You should be able to email the PDF to your device, the help section on your device will probably have instructions for this.

If you’re looking at Proquest E-Book Central it is a bit more complicated. First, you will have to choose Whitman from the drop down menu. For Proquest, you will have to “check out” the book if you want to download the whole book, and to do so you will need to download Adobe Digital Editions. You will be prompted to do this through the website. If you are hoping to read the book on your mobile device, you will have to download the Bluefire app (for iOS or Android). This download will disappear after the check out period (ranges, but is usually 7 or 21 days). You can also download specific chapters as PDFs, though for some books this might also be on a timer.

E-books in EBSCO work similarly. Availability of full book downloads is at the publishers' discretion, so it is not always an option. For most books (other than those that are DRM-free), you will need to make a MyEBSCO account, and also download Adobe Digital Editions. You can select how long you'd like the loan, for up to 7 days.

For anything in Adobe Digital Editions, please consider returning the book if you are finished before your loan period is up, so that others are able to use it.

If you have any questions about using an ebook for your syllabus or reproducing any of it, you can contact librarians.