E-books Expand at the Cheng Library Ebooks now account for nearly one third of the holdings of the Cheng Library, and five collections are described in detail. Unbeknownst to many users yet forming an increasingly large portion of the Library’s holdings, is an extensive collection of electronic books from several prominent vendors. Over the past decade, the Cheng Library has been actively adding to its electronic book collection, and ebooks now account for nearly one-third of the Library’s total book collection. What may have first begun as an experimental venture into this format for monographic books has now become an accustomed and frequent practice of purchasing books in electronic format rather than print. Organizations currently offer many purchasing options by bundling ebooks in attractive subject packages at competitive prices. Faculty often add ebooks to their Blackboard course shells. Unlimited user licenses for most of the Library’s ebooks means the entire class will have access to the book. The unlimited user license also means that more than one person can open and read an ebook simultaneously. During the library sessions for Pioneer Success Seminar, all new students are introduced to the Library’s ebook collection and experiment with reading and navigating an ebook online. Ebooks offer numerous advantages compared with their printed counterparts. The ebook platforms are known for their convenience, immediate access and ease of use. In general, most of the vendors offer a variety of additional online features that make ebooks appealing. These features usually include: Highlighting Adding notes Adding bookmarks Zooming in or out Chapter downloads Searching the entire text of the book for a word or term Navigating easily using the table of contents or the “Go to page” tool. The five collections described below comprise the ebooks currently available at the Library. ProQuest Ebook Central The largest of the Cheng Library’s ebook collections is ProQuest Ebook Central (formerly Ebrary). This collection contains more than 145,000 electronic books covering every subject and discipline taught at the University. The collection encompasses a broad range of works from recognized and authoritative publishers including many academic sources. ACLS Humanities E-Book Collection The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Humanities E-Book Collection offers more than 5,000 full-text ebooks selected by scholars for their enduring significance for research and teaching in the humanities. The collection includes titles from more than one hundred publishers of scholarly and academic books. The subjects cover a broad variety of disciplines in the humanities: archaeology, art, film and media studies, folklore, history, law, linguistics, literature and literary criticism, musicology, performance studies, philosophy, political science, religion, sociology, women’s studies, and more. EBSCO Business Ebook Collection This up-to-date collection includes approximately 500 ebooks for business and management published by a variety of companies. All of these ebooks have current copyright dates. Springer Nursing Ebook Collection This collection is a specialized selection of approximately 100 ebooks published by Springer, a company known internationally in the fields of science and medicine. The ebooks were specifically chosen for their relevance to the needs of nursing students at William Paterson University. Titles include works on research, care planning, pharmacology, nursing theory and assessment. Credo Reference's Academic Core This extensive collection of nearly 1,000 reference titles includes dictionaries, encyclopedias, atlases and guidebooks on many subjects. The titles cover both historic and contemporary themes and issues in art, biography, business, geography, history, language, law, literature, medicine, music, philosophy, psychology, religion, science, the social sciences, and technology. These ebooks provide a useful starting point for general research on almost any topic. The Credo results screen also offers images, topic pages and a “mind map” to guide the user to additional entries related to the search concept. Among the most popular ebooks at the Cheng Library (based on the number of times accessed) are the following titles: Why We Cooperate Empowering Learners: Guidelines for School Library Programs Girls, Delinquency, and Juvenile Justice The Nurse’s Grant Writing Advantage Middle Range Theory for Nursing All ebooks can be found using the Library’s online catalog and the discovery system, ChengFind. Subject search results may also be narrowed to just the books in electronic format. We invite you to sample the Library’s ebook collections and evaluate the usefulness of this type of resource for your research. If you have questions or would like more information about the Cheng Library’s ebook collections, please contact Richard Kearney, Electronic Resources Librarian, by email at kearneyr@wpunj.edu or by phone at 973-720-2165. February 05, 2017
