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 9,400 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.
ebrary	43,900+ full text books on many topics: Business & Economics, Computers, Technology & Engineering, Humanities, Life & Physical Sciences, Social & Behavioral Sciences.	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.
ENGnetBASE	1200+ Engineering handbooks published by CRC Press.	You can print or save 1 chapter or section at a time.	Search Help
ENVIROnetBASE	More than 560 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	1780+ 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.	Search Tips
MATHnetBASE	350+ full text mathematics e-books published by CRC Press.	Ability to view or print 1 chapter at a time.	How it Works
NANOnetBASE	90+ full text nanotechnology e-books published by CRC Press.	Ability to view or print 1 chapter at a time.	How it Works
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.	Help
Safari Techbooks	1200+ computer and information technology books from O'Reilly Media. 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
Various Dictionaries and Thesauri	Online dictionaries such as the Oxford English Dictionary and other Oxford specialized books on many topics	The OED and other online books provide various options for printing/saving.
Various Encyclopdias and Almanacs	We have access to online encyclopedias on many topics	Online book vendors such as Wiley, Oxford, MgGraw-Hill all have different options for printing/saving.

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.

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Last modified: Jul 29, 2009, 14:21 EDT