Ebook FAQ for VCU Libraries

Licensing Overview

• User Licenses: Varies. See details in the box below.
• Subscription or Perpetual Access? Mostly perpetual, but some are subscription.
  • EBSCO ebooks purchased by VIVA to support courses can be found in our VIVA Affordable Course Content Ebooks collection. All titles in this collection have perpetual, unlimited user access, and are either DRM-free or DRM-lite.
  • Most of our EBSCO titles are perpetually owned, but some belong to subscription reference ebook collections, like the Consumer Health Reference Center, or Literary Reference Center. (NOTE: As of Nov. 10, 2021, most of these subscription titles do not appear in Primo.)
• DRM-free? Varies. Certain titles on this platform do not have viewing, printing, or downloading restrictions, nor do they require a vendor login, but others do. To identify DRM-free titles on this platform, please contact a Collections Librarian at Cabell or the Health Sciences Library. They will need to access EBSCOhost's Collection Manager and look for a DRM-FREE indicator. 

List of all Ebook Titles in This Collection

To obtain a list of all ebook titles in this collection, please contact a Collections Librarian at Cabell or the Health Sciences Library. They will need to access EBSCOhost's Collection Manager and go to Reports --> My Owned Titles. Alternatively, a title list can be pulled from VCU Libraries' EBSCOadmin account by going to Reports & Statistics --> Reports --> and selecting "Show All" under Title Usage.

• How often are titles added? EBSCO ebooks are added to VCU Libraries' collection on a rolling basis (i.e. when they are purchased by collections librarians, or through the VIVA's Faculty Ebook Textbook Portal).
• How often are titles removed? N/A. VCU Libraries owns EBSCO ebooks so these titles should theoretically remain a perpetual part of our collection.

Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT)

Available upon request. See https://www.ebsco.com/technology/accessibility.

Varies. 

The Detailed Record page lists information about each EBSCO ebook. The first field under the Permissions section indicates how many user licenses are currently available. Below is an example of an EBSCO ebook that can only be accessed by 1 person at a time.

Below is the message you will see if all user licenses are in use. Patrons can try again later.

The new EBSCO user interface launched at VCU on July 1, 2025. For some ebooks on the new interface, the most prominent option for reading them may appear to be through downloading, but reading an ebook online will ensure that you are not subject to the page download limitations. To read an EBSCO ebook online, you can (1) view your "Access options" at the top, next to the Download button, and select PDF or EPUB, or (2) you can click on the text in the Table of Contents to view that section online. See a sample screenshot below.

Please note that some titles are only available in EPUB format, or only as a PDF. The publisher determines what is available to us.

MAYBE. The best ebooks for required classroom use are those that can be perpetually accessed by VCU Libraries with unlimited licensing. The following EBSCO ebooks meet this criteria:

• ebooks that are part of the "VIVA Affordable Course Content Ebooks" collection, which you can determine by looking at the Primo record (i.e. library website); as well as
• ebooks that are part of the "EBSCO Ebooks" collection AND have a concurrent user level that is "Unlimited" (see above "User Licenses" box to determine concurrent user level).

Please note that many of the books in the "EBSCO Ebooks" collection have 1-user licenses and are not unlimited. We do not recommend books with 1-user licenses for use as course content even with small classes, due to the inability to guarantee access to all in the class. At the most, these may be considered for recommended (and not required) classroom use, although such use is still not suggested.

Some EBSCO ebooks with 1-user licenses can be upgraded to Unlimited licenses. If instructors are interested in a book that is currently available on EBSCO, please ask them to submit a purchase request form to see if VCU Libraries can purchase a perpetual, unlimited copy of the ebook for their course.  

More information on this topic is available at our Library Ebooks as Course Materials research guide.

Entire Ebook Download: A Download button for downloading an entire ebook has not been enabled for this platform. Instead, it is recommended that library users Print or Save pages as PDF, as described below in "Chapter Downloads", which would enable users to read EBSCO ebooks offline.

EBSCO has a mobile app available for their ebooks, but as of July 2021, VCU Libraries' users will not find it useful because it operates entirely based on the Download button. Since the Download button is not enabled for VCUL, none of EBSCO's ebooks can currently be read through the mobile app.

The reason that the Download button has not been enabled is because it would activate a Download button for *all* ebooks, even ebooks that have 1-user licenses that we would not like to make downloadable since someone downloading that ebook would impede others' access to that title, even if it's not being used in real-time. Users who click on the Download button for a 1-user ebook would then receive an error message, which would likely cause confusion. Because EBSCO ebooks can be easily accessed offline by printing/saving to PDF, it was determined that this alternative is preferable to turning on the Download button. Feedback or questions about this feature can be directed to a Collections librarian.

Chapter Downloads: Yes, if the publisher allows for that option. If a publisher allows print/saving/emailing their ebooks, then up to 100 pages of an ebook can be printed/saved/emailed during a session, after which that option becomes "temporarily unavailable." For most of EBSCO's ebooks, this is a session-based limitation, meaning that when you close your ebook browser window and access the ebook again, this should reset your printing/saving/emailing limit.

Note that EBSCO has its own method for counting pages that may not correspond with the print book pages. For instance, if you print/save/email 100 pages of a 300 page book, the EBSCO platform may actually print/save/email 260 book pages.

The number of pages that can be printed/saved/emailed on the EBSCO platform is stated under the "Chapter download, print email & save" in the Permissions section of an ebook's Detailed Record page. See below for an example.

You can also view your download limit by clicking on the Download button, which is found on an Detailed Record page, and is also available when reading an EBSCO ebook online:

Clicking on the Download button will result in a pop-up window that will provide you with your download limit:

It is possible that some titles may not have a download option available at all. Publishers determine whether and/or how many pages can be downloaded on the EBSCO ebook platform.

The best ebook link to provide library users is the Primo (library website) permalink. Finding a permalink that includes "alma" (rather than "cdi") in the last part of the URL is your best bet, since those records are more likely to be stable.

If you require a direct link to the ebook, however, you can follow either of the instructions below to provide library users with links that should work on and off campus. Please be aware that if the publisher changes their ebook URLs that the links you generate below may stop working.

On campus
If you are creating this link on campus, use the following instructions to generate a URL that will allow your on- and off-campus users to access this ebook.

• To provide a link to the Table of Contents that VCU patrons can access on and off campus, go to an ebook's Detailed Record page and click on the Share button above and to the right of the ebook title:

A "Share" pop-up window will appear that has a "Create link" option. Click on "Create link" to generate a proxied URL that can be shared with others at VCU. 

• Proxied links can also be generated for specific pages or book chapters by viewing that page, and then clicking on the Share button at the top right of the screen, above the Table of Contents.

This will also generate a "Share" pop-up window that includes a "Create link" button. Clicking on "Create link" will create a proxied link to share with others in the VCU community. It will direct others to the page from which you clicked the Share button.

Off campus
If you are creating this link off campus, use the following instructions to generate a URL that will allow your on- and off-campus users to access this ebook.

• Follow the on-campus instructions above.

• Please visit EBSCO's ebooks LibGuide for more information about this platform.
• The EBSCO ebook platform times out after 2 hours of inactivity, just like the rest of the EBSCOhost databases (KG, July 2023).
• To close a 1- or 3-user EBSCO ebook so that others can use it, EBSCO recommends clicking on the Result List, New Search, Back, or Exit links in the eBook Viewer. Informal testing also shows that clicking on the browser back button, closing the browser tab, or exiting the browser also works (KG, MAD, 7/6/23).