The UMass Lowell Library offers our students, staff, and faculty thousands of full text ebooks. Most are available for unlimited use by the campus community.
Some, however, are limited to 3 or 1 simultaneous users. Ebooks with those limits are not considered eligible to be no-cost course textbooks for OER course-marking purposes.
For more information on how to determine if an ebook in the library’s collection has unlimited users, and is therefore suitable for a no-cost textbook option for a NOCOST designation in the course catalog, see below. If you need further assistance in assessing an ebook as a no-cost option please contact Meg Shields at Margaret_Shields@uml.edu
1. Under the Catalog tab, enter the title, keywords or subject for the book you are looking for.
2. Filter the results in the left hand column of the results page.
Under Held by Library click "UMass Lowell Libraries".
Under Format click "eBook".
3. To determine whether an ebook permits unlimited users, click the blue "Access online" OR "View Ebook" button. This will take you to either the vendor's platform or to a flyout menu listing platforms where the title may be found. While useful for temporary access, please note that The Internet Archive is not guaranteed permanent access for a classroom textbook.
On the Proquest platform, library access to the ebook is described directly beneath the title, as here:
On the EBSCO platform, library access is described to the left of the title, as here:
If the library owns limited copies, the landing page looks like the screenshot below.
You can also search for ebook titles in individual databases.
Click the Databases tab on the left side of the library website and scroll to one of the following:
In general these titles allow unlimited simultaneous users, but please pay careful attention to information on the landing page.
Ebooks which place limits on simultaneous users don't fulfill requirements for the NOCOST designation in the course catalog.
The Faculty Select platform allows you to search within your subject area for unlimited-user ebooks the Library already has access to, as well as other books available for purchase that qualify for NOCOST designation in the course catalog.
