FAQs about ebrary

What is ebrary?

ebrary is a vendor of books in electronic format. ebrary pulls together titles from many book publishers and converts them into ebooks – books that you can access from your computer.

What is this new ebrary collection at UCFV?

ebrary has a number of different ebook packages available. The one that we have selected is called Academic Complete. ebrary Academic Complete includes more than 30,000 titles from over 220 academic and professional publishers.

Why did you purchase ebrary?

We didn’t actually purchase these books. We have paid a license to use them for one year. If we want to continue to have access to them, we will have to pay the license in subsequent years.

We decided to license ebrary for a number of reasons. We know that electronic journals are hugely popular with both faculty and students. We can see this through usage statistics, and we also hear this directly from users. We don’t know whether electronic books will be received in the same way. We’ve had electronic books in our collection for a few years, but the number is fairly small and we have not been able to get a sense of whether this format is one that students and faculty embrace. We decided to license this ebrary collection for one year, promote it heavily, and assess student and faculty response to see whether this is something we want to continue and grow.

We chose this ebrary collection because its subject range covers most of the academic disciplines taught here at UCFV. We’re hoping that there will be something for everyone. The books come from academic and professional publishers that are respected and from whom we purchase many items in print. It’s a collection that suits our mainly undergraduate university.

How do I find your ebrary books?

You’ll likely find them when you do a subject or keyword search in our library catalogue. If you want to search specifically for our ebrary titles, type ebrary in the catalogue search box.

Why do so many ebrary books show up in my catalogue search results?

When you do a search in our library catalogue, the results display in the order of most recently published to older publications. Since much of the ebrary collection consists of recent publications, these rise to the top of your search results.

If you have any questions or comments about our ebrary collection, please contact Kim Isaac, Director of Library Services, at local 4696, or by email to kim.isaac@ucfv.ca.