eBooks

How to access Norwich University of the Arts ebook collection

Norwich University of the Arts Library subscribes to e-book providers EBook Central, VLEBooks, EBSCOHost and O’Reilly. We have over 450,000 e-books to choose from, and you can even rent or suggest extra purchases too. Not all titles are available on Discovery (because there are so many of them!) but you will find a list of our e-book providers on the Online Resources page – you can filter the list to just show these and then search for titles, authors or keywords on each of them.

Online Resources

You will see on the resources list of e-book providers that we also have access to Berg Fashion Library which includes a collection of academic e-books covering important classic and modern writings on fashion; and Screen Studies which includes screenplays and critical and contextual books on film.

Can I Download E-books?

Yes, when you want to download an e-book you will need either Adobe Digital Editions (for PC and Mac) or the Bluefire Reader app (iOS/Android).
Adobe Digital Editions is installed on all student computers on campus.
You can download it for free to use on your personal computer here

One important thing to remember is that you should not use your usual student ID and password, instead you need to select the tick box: “I want to authorize my computer without an ID”.

When you go to download an E-book it will open via one of two platforms: EBook Central or VLEBooks. The process should be fairly straight-forward either way, but here are two PDF guides to help you with each platform:

Downloading from EBook Central Downloading from VLEBooks

What Can I Download?

VLEbooks
For VLEbooks you can have up to three e-books downloaded at once.
We advise you to browse through an e-book online before downloading so you can decide whether you really want it. Once you’ve downloaded an e-book you will have it for a set length of time (which you can choose when you download) and you won’t be able to ‘give it back’ until that time has expired.
For example, if you’ve downloaded 3 books from VLEbooks to keep for two weeks you won’t be able to download any more until that two weeks is up. So it’s best to choose to download for just a couple of days.

EBook Central
You can download whole books from EBook Central or you can just download individual pages or chapters. If you do this then you’ll get a PDF that doesn’t expire. For copyright reasons, there will be a limit on how many pages or chapters you can download in this way.

O’Reilly
This platform doesn’t allow you to download books in the same ways as the others, but it does have a free app which you can use to get unlimited online and offline access to books, videos and online training courses.
Find out more and download the app here.

Saving links to E-Books

If you find a useful e-book on the catalogue and want to email yourself a link to it, don’t just copy the URL from your browser as this won’t work next time you click on it. You’ll need to create a permalink. You can do this in Discovery by going to the book record and clicking the Permalink button in the right hand menu. This generates a permalink to your book which appears at the top of the screen for you to copy:

Can I Print or Copy + Paste with E-books?

Some e-book providers will allow you to print or copy their content, whilst others won’t, due to copyright restrictions. When you open an e-book, the amount you are allowed to print should be displayed onscreen and will vary between providers. If you can’t see the amount displayed, then once you try printing or copying you should get a message onscreen telling you what you can do.

Can I Print from a Downloaded E-book?

Again, this depends on the e-book provider. Some allow printing only when you are viewing the title online, but some will allow printing from a downloaded title.