Understanding ebooks

Ebooks are an online version of the print books you would find in bookshops or libraries. These include but are not limited to dictionaries, encyclopaedias and textbooks. They cover a wide range of topics and subject areas to help support your studies and research. The OU library has a large collection of ebooks, all of which can be read online.

Ebooks are a great way to introduce yourself to a new topic. They can give you a general overview of a subject before you investigate it in further detail.

The advantages to using ebooks

Ebooks have many great features which allow you to personalise your learning to suit your individual needs and they are available 24/7. This video highlights the advantages of using ebooks.

Transcript Introducing E-books

Did you know there are hundreds of thousands of eBooks available from The Open University Library?

The great thing about eBooks is they are flexible, portable and can fit around your lifestyle.

If you’re on the go, eBooks go with you.

EBooks are a gateway to a new way of learning.

Our eBooks cover a wide range of subject areas related to your study and research.

Get started by using Library Search to find an eBook by topic or title within seconds and dive directly into

the book.

You can save time by searching the entire eBook for a term or concept.

Navigate them easily by moving between pages or chapters to find the content you need and you can

increase or decrease the font size to suit your reading style.

Some eBooks allow you to instantly highlight text, take notes, or bookmark pages to come back to later.

If you find something you love, share it easily with your OU community.

Most of our eBooks are available to multiple readers at any time, wherever you are.

Connect to the internet and connect to the library!

We have access to a large number of ebooks from a range of different suppliers. All the ebooks in our library can be read online.

Some of them will provide even more advanced features than those detailed in the video.

Try for yourself

Use the link to go to the Oxford English Dictionary

The ebook version can be accessed by all our students and it can be searched in many different ways making it much more useful and interesting.

The Oxford English Dictionary is in 20 volumes and takes up a large amount of shelf space in a regular library.

You can access all 20 volumes quickly and easily as ebooks in our collection. Take a bit of time to explore the different features of the ebook.

Explore the ebook collection

Use the link to go to the Library Search webpage.

Type in a subject that interests you and conduct a search. Or select a topic from the suggestions below.

  • Ancient Rome
  • Biodiversity
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Picasso

Once you have a page of results locate the Resource Type filter option and filter the results by ebook. Take some time to look at different titles we have in the collection and explore the features different suppliers provide.

You can find out about ejournals from the understanding ejournals page.