assignment

GEN103: Using ebrary to find ebooks Hello, GEN103 students! Earlier in the course, you learned how to search for journal articles in the AU Library. For this week’s assignment, you will find a chapter within an ebook in the library that addresses your research question. You’ll be able to use this ebook for your final assignment in Week 5. This tutorial will show you how to search for ebooks in the Ebrary database within the AU Library. Let’s get started! Begin by navigating to the Ebrary database in the library. To get there, click on the Library link in your course or on the student portal page. You’ll then be taken to the library website. Once you’re there, click on “Find Articles and More”. Then click on “Databases by Type”. This page lists the library’s databases according to the type or format of information they contain, such as journal articles, ebooks, newspapers, or videos. Click on the link for “Ebooks”. Then click on the link for Ebrary. We’re now on the search page in the Ebrary database. Here, you can enter your keywords into the Simple Search box. Make sure you put quotation marks around any exact phrases that you want to look for. For example, let’s use the sample topic we used previously: Are children in the United States over diagnosed with ADHD? You already came up with some keywords, including children, ADHD, overdiagnosis, and “United States”. Now enter all of those keywords into the search box here. Then hit Search. You’ll see a list of results. Click on the orange boxes to learn about some of the features available to you on this page. When you’re finished, click the “Next” button.

Title Results/Chapter Results tabs: You’ll see tabs for Title Results, Chapter Results, and Searches. “Title results”, which is the page that you currently see, will show you entire books that contain your keywords. The “Chapter Results” tab will show you individual chapters within different ebooks that contain your keywords. The “Searches” tab will show you all of your previous searches from this particular session in Ebrary.

Subject checkboxes: You can narrow your search by selecting one or a few of the checkboxes for subjects related to your topic and then clicking the Search button below. But take a look at your results before you do this; you may find some great books on your first page or two of results!

Book results: Click on the cover or title of a book to open to the first page. You can also click on the Table of Contents button to see chapters within the book.

Let’s select one of the books from our results list. We’ll click on the cover to open the book. Now you see a landing page for the book we’ve selected. Click on the orange boxes to learn about some of the features available on this page. When you’re finished, click the “Next” button. Read Online: Click on the Read Online button to begin reading the book from the beginning.

Table of Contents: Here you can see the Table of Contents, which lists the chapters within the book. Click on the title of a chapter to jump directly to that chapter.

Download: You can download the entire book to your computer for 14 days. When you click the “Download” button, you’ll be asked to sign in. Click the “Create an Account” link in the Sign In window that appears if you’ve never done so in ebrary. Once you’ve signed in, follow the steps on the screen to download the book. You’ll be asked to download the Adobe Digital Editions software as part of the process. This software is available for free, and you’ll see a link for it in the Ebrary download window. Add to Bookshelf: You can add books to your bookshelf within Ebrary, where they’ll be easy to find next time you return to the database. When you click the “Add to Bookshelf” button, you’ll be asked to sign in. Click the “Create an Account” link in the Sign In window that appears if you’ve never done so in ebrary. To view the books you’ve added to your bookshelf, click on the Bookshelf tab at the top of the page.

Cite Book: Click on “Cite Book” to see a formatted citation for this book. Make sure you select APA from the dropdown box in the window that appears.

Now we’ll click on “Read Online” to open the book. Now we see the Ebrary reader, or the inside of the book we’ve selected. This reader allows you to read the book right on your screen, as well as navigate within the book. Click on the orange boxes to learn about some of the features available in the Ebrary reader. When you’re finished, click the “Next” button.

Arrows: Click on the arrows above the book to turn the pages. You can also scroll down to see more pages.

Table of Contents: Here you can see the Table of Contents again, which lists the chapters within the book. Click on the title of a chapter to jump directly to that chapter. Some books have a more detailed table of contents here than others. If the book doesn’t have many chapters listed in the table of contents in this section, use the arrows at the top of the page to turn the pages of the book. Turn a few pages until you get to the table of contents within the book itself. Here you might see additional chapters that could be useful for your assignment. You won’t be able to click on them, but you can still turn through the pages of the book to find them.

Search box: Use this search box to search for a particular word within the text of the entire book. Once you enter a keyword and click Search, the Table of Contents list below will then show an arrow next to the chapter or chapters that contain your keyword, making it easy to locate the section of the book that may discuss a specific topic. Print button: Click on the Print icon if you want to print a section of the book. Printing is usually limited to a specified number of pages per session. You can also use this feature if you simply want to download a section of the book as a PDF to your computer. Page number box: You can enter a page number in this box to jump ahead to a specific page without turning through all the pages of the book.

These are just some basic tips to help you get started using Ebrary. As you may have found in previous weeks, your first search may not always be successful. Try using some of the other keywords you came up with earlier in the course, and enter different combinations of keywords into the search box. As you are using the library to complete your assignment, feel free to reach out to your instructor or the Ashford University Librarians with any research questions you may have. You can reach your instructor by email and you can reach us, the librarians, via email, chat or phone - check our website for business hours. We are happy to help!