Using NetLibrary
The shared
NetLibrary ebook collection now has nearly 5,000 titles. The
titles have been selected to provide support for the broad curriculum
requirements of California's 110 community colleges.
To get to NetLibrary
1. From the Virtual Library home page,
select "Research and Information Resources."
2. If you are a new user,
click on "NetLibrary, " and follow the
prompts to create your personal username and password.
3. If you have created a
user id, login with your personal username and password (box in
the upper right hand corner).
A Word About Books
- Reading
books on a computer or a handheld device is obviously different than
reading from a bound artifact.
- While you
may not be able to curl up with a laptop, feel the riffle of
pages, or smell the lovely scent of leather bound pages,
electronic books can provide equally compelling visceral experiences
when used appropriately.
- Why do we
have such powerful emotional responses to books?
- Books,
in and of themselves, may be works of art.
- But for
most of us, we treasure books because of their content and their
ability to transform, enlighten, mystify, humor, and enchant.
- We love
books not for how well they look on the shelf, but for how well they
have enriched our perception and understanding of the world, both seen
and unseeable.
- And we
appreciate books because they have enabled the knowledge and wisdom of
the past to be preserved and passed down to succeeding generations.
- Okay,
many readers like books because they provide an escape hatch to an
alternative reality and are just plain entertaining.
- Some
people do not particularly treasure, love, or even appreciate
books.
- Perhaps
an overly controlling 2nd grade teacher made reading an awful
experience.
- Perhaps
at critical junctures, lively interests were discouraged for more
"acceptable" topics and a young reader lost interest in reading.
- Perhaps
reading was just plain hard and not at all rewarding despite
encouraging teachers and parents.
- Electronic books do
not improve on printed bound volumes, but they feature reading
and researching tools that can greatly enhance academic use of
books.
- In addition to keyword
searching in the author, title,
and subject fields,
search in full text, keywords, and/or publisher fields.
- Index features
hypertext links to references.
- Find every occurrence
of a specific term within a text.
- Copy-and-paste
quotations directly from the book into your word processing document
and quickly create the appropriate citation.
- Quickly define
unknown or unfamiliar terms with built in dictionary.
- Create a "Favorites"
list of titles for quick access later on.
Practice Makes Perfect...
- Each search
field works with its own index of terms and will return different
results for the same keyword.
- Use one
term, such as Stuart, England, or marriage, and do a search in
each field ("Title," "Subject," "Keyword," "Full Text") one at a time,
so that you can see how the results differ depending upon the field
searched.
- Now, do one
search with the following input (query): "Title" marriage, "Subject" England, "Keyword" Stuart.
- Create your
own query and select a title from the results to "read."
- Open the
book to read by clicking on the "Browse this book" link.
- Create a
post-it note.
- Create a
bookmark.
- Close this
book and add it to your "Favorites" list