Large collection of electronic books from leading university, trade and professional publishers.
VCU's local licenses are viewable in Alma with proper permissions (Acquisitions > Acquisitions Infrastructure > Licenses). If you need assistance, please speak with a Research Acquisition and Metadata team member.
A full list of VIVA resources (ebooks and databases) may be viewed at vivalib.org/az.php. If you require access to a specific VIVA contract, please contact a Research Acquisition and Metadata team member.
Licensing Overview
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.
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 "Concurrent User Level", which is the last metadata field listed directly above the Table of Contents, describes the user license for each title. The most common EBSCO ebook licenses are for 1 user or Unlimited. Below is an example of an EBSCO ebook that can only be accessed by 1 person at a time.
If an ebook has a 1-user license and it is in use, then a pop-up will appear when you try to access the title, as shown below:
If an ebook has a 3-user license and they are all in use, then you will see the following pop-up:
MAYBE. The best ebooks for required classroom use are those that can be permanently accessed by VCU Libraries with unlimited licensing. The following EBSCO ebooks meet this criteria:
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 permanent, unlimited copy of the ebook for their course or visit the VIVA Faculty Ebook Portal to see in an unlimited user version is available from VIVA.
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 anywhere from 10-99 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 in the left-hand column when viewing an ebook on a desktop/laptop. See below.
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.
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.
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