Electronic Books
Search Our Entire Collection
Search our electronic book collection by title, author, or subject keyword in the Library Catalog.
- From the basic search area, type in keyword or title search
- Choose Electronic Books from drop down menu
Visit Individual Collections for Full Text Searching
Connect to e-book sites in order to search & read the full text online of these books. See also Reference Web Sites: Digital Collections for access to some free, or public domain e-books, and some searchable e-books that allow users to view snippets.
| Collection | Description | Printing/Saving Tips | Help & Tutorial |
|---|---|---|---|
| Books 24x7 | Full text online of more than 7,000 computer, information technology, and engineering books from many publishers. | To connect, you are required to create a user account using your wpi.edu email. Visitors may use on public access computers near the reference desk if they present a photo ID. Print or save only 1 page at a time. |
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| ebrary | 26,000+ full text books on many topics: Business & Economics, Computers, Technology & Engineering, Humanities, Life & Physical Sciences, Social & Behavioral Sciences, and Datamonitor Industry Reports. | ebrary Reader plug-in needed to view books. Create account to bookmark, highlight. Printing restricted to 4 pages at a time. Ability to copy & paste only small sections of text at time. |
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| ENGnetBASE | 745+ Engineering handbooks published by CRC Press. | You can print or save 1 chapter or section at a time. | Search Help |
| ENVIROnetBASE | More than 300 full text environmental handbooks on such topics on Water Science, Technology, and Engineering, GIS, environmental chemistry, ecology, and earth science. | You can print or save 1 chapter or section at a time. | Help |
| Gale Virtual Reference Collection | Search 30+ Gale e-book reference sources such as Gale Encyclopedia of Multicultural America, Gale Encyclopedia of U.S. Economic History, Major Acts of Congress, Encyclopedia of Bioethics, Business Plans Handbook, Encyclopedia of American Industries, and other titles. | You can print or save 1 chapter or section at a time. | Help |
| Knovel | 1300+ full text scientific and technical reference e-books from many publishers with interactive tables and graphs for some. | View or print only 1 chapter or section at a time. | Help Center |
| MATHnetBASE | 240+ full text mathematics e-books published by CRC Press. | Ability to view or print 1 chapter at a time. | |
| Netlibrary | 7,900+ books on a wide range of topics from many publishers. | Netlibrary reader or a PDF viewer is needed to view e-books. Ability to print only 1 page or copy & paste 5,000 characters at a time. |
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| Safari Techbooks | 900+ computer and information technology books from O'Reilly and Associates. Other publishers books are searchable but we do not have access to the full text. For these, users will see "PREVIEW -Additional content appearing in this section has been removed." | Ability to print or copy only 1 page at a time. | Help |
Restrictions on Use
Each e-book site has its own terms of use, membership agreement, etc., which you are expected to abide by if you use that site. Please look for links to the terms of use from the beginning page of each of the e-book sites.
- Typically, you are allowed to download, view, save and/or print portions of e-books, in reasonable quantity, for personal use, such as for study, research, or teaching.
- You are not allowed to download entire books. The e-book sites monitor usage, looking especially for any that might be deemed excessive, and they will take steps to curb any usage that they see as excessive and outside the terms of the user agreements.
- The library will cooperate with the e-book sites to curtail usage that falls outside the terms of the user agreements. If such usage continues, it could result in the termination of WPI's access to e-books.
Remote Access to E-Books
E-books are accessible from computers in the WPI IP address range (i.e., beginning 130.215), which means computers directly connected to the campus network. To access from home or another remote location, use the WPI proxy server.
Questions or Comments?
Please send us a message using the Library Answers online form.
Maintained by lib-webmaster@wpi.eduLast modified: Feb 13, 2008, 10:38 EST

