According to The Economist, “Digitization may have come late to book publishing, but it is transforming the business in short order.” (Business: Great digital expectations; the books business. (2011, Sep 10). The Economist, 400(8750), 69. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/888378749?accountid=14853)

The prices of e-readers are falling, the range of e-readers and tablets on the market is expanding,  the formats for reading digital books has stabalized around PDF and EPUB, while the cost of buying e-books remains in flux.  So where does this leave academic business library collections?  Not on the sidelines, but in the thick of it!

As the availability of scholarly e-books has increased, so has our spending on e-books for economics, management, accounting, marketing, finance and business in general.  While I’ve never embraced the notion that “if it isn’t online it doesn’t exist“, I do recognize that the anywhere, anytime convenience of e-books fits the needs of both VSB undergraduates and MBA candidates.    And now faculty are increasingly asking for digital books!

Most of our e-books are discoverable via the library catalog.  However the catalog only allows searching by metadata items such as author, title, publisher, subject and when available chapter titles.  Since valuable information may only be discoverable in the  full text of e-books, searching in the native interface may be what’s needed.

Business Expert Press download options

The three e-book platforms that allow downloading books to your computer, tablet or reader enabled with a  Adobe Digital Editions application are EBSCOHost e-books, Business Expert Press, and OECD iLibrary.  Business Expert Press books are practical, brief, written by scholars and for undergraduate and graduate students.  To download a book  from a Business Expert Press title, choose InfoTools and Global Express Options.  The entire text is downloadable without any restrictions on how many users can access the title or limitations on duration of use.

Books on the EBSCOHost e-books platform come from a wide range of publishers.  They are the same books you are likely to find in print in books stores or on library shelves.  Some are scholarly and some are professional.  Some can only be read online, but an ever increasing number of them can be downloaded and checkout for up to three days and renewed.  Unless we have purchased a multi-user copy, when an EBSCOHost e-book is downloaded and checked out, it is unavailable to other potential users.  To download a book you need to create an EBSCOHost account and sign in.

EBSCOHost eBook online reading launch and download options

OECD iLibrary includes almost all of the books, articles and annuals published by the Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development.  Multiple users can download books simultaneously about topics ranging from agriculture to economics, industry, education, technology, trade, finance, governance, urbanization and taxation.  If you see a PDF, you can simply download it.

Additional business e-book platforms are listed on the Bartley Business Information Center home page under Resources, E-books.