An e-book is a book available digitally through your computer.  As books, e-books are longer than most electronic documents.  As electronic documents, e-books are intended for use on a screen, rather than on paper.  Some e-books, particularly those digitized for archival or preservation purposes, are simply scanned images of print books (or p-books).  Other e-books, such as those available through Ebrary, have been designed to allow full-text searching, copying, and even highlighting and note-taking.

The Tri-Colleges license access to e-books from a few different providers.

Current e-books, fiction and non-fiction, from a range of disciplines:

• Ebrary - over 30,000 titles
• NetLibrary - over 13,000 titles

Historical fiction and non-fiction e-books:

• Early English Books Online (EEBO)
• Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO)

Every e-book from each of these providers is listed in the Tripod catalog!  These e-books will therefore come up in the course of your library research.

If you would like to search Tripod for e-books to the exclusion of other types of materials, choose the "advanced" search tab, enter your search terms, and select "e-books" under the "Material types" drop-down box.  If you would like to search an individual e-book collection, follow the appropriate link below:

A Tripod record for an ebook will contain a direct link to the ebook.  The ebooks are accessible from within your browser and you navigate them using the tools provided.

If you would like to use an ebook from Ebrary but you are not working on a public-area computer, you will need to perform a one-time install of their reader plug-in.  For more information about the Ebrary plugin and the unique capabilities of their ebook reader, please continue to the second page of this guide.