Research Guides: eBooks/Online Book Collections: Science & Technology

Some ebook packages and sites for science & engineering

These collections are listed by bibliographic entries, such as, author, title, series and subject, in WU catalogs (except where noted). However you may want to use these specific sources to locate items that are not yet in our catalogs or to search within FULLTEXT.

E-Books Tips and Hints A guide to using E-Book and Online book resources provided by the Bernard Becker Medical Library. (Most but not all Becker Library eBooks are available to all WU users.)

AccessMedicine
Provides access to over 60 key medical texts, including Harrison’s Online. Subscribed by the Becker Medical Library, available to all of WU.
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Use information
Formats: html files
Download/Print: display, download, or print out, for your own research or study only
Ereaders: html file formatted for handhelds available; use html to epub converter for others
Lending: no, on-campus or authenticated WU users only
ACM Digital Library
Includes over 1000 conference proceedings, plus journals and other Association for Computing Machinery publications
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Use information
Formats: pdf files
Download/Print: display, download, or print out, for your own research or study only
Ereaders: if ok with pdf
Lending: yes, limited to printed copies, no e-distribution allowed
ASM Handbooks online
from ASM International, the Materials Information Society
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Use information
Formats: html files
Download: not really; you can copy & paste
Print: print section by section
Ereaders: not really
Lending: yes with some restrictions
Biodiversity Heritage Library
MOST OF THESE ARE NOT INCLUDED IN WU CATALOGS. Mostly digitized public domain books and journals.
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Use information
Formats: pdf or OCR (text) files
Download/Print: yes
Ereaders: Links to Internet Archive where Kindle and Epub formats are sometimes available; more info
Lending: freely available

Books@Ovid This link opens in a new window
Full text, references, updates, and graphics from some of the most respected sources in medicine, nursing, and pharmacology. A searcher can choose to run a search in one text, selected texts, or all texts. Color diagrams, charts, and other textbook illustrations are available as thumbnails or full-sized graphics. Ovid updates books with most recent edition or with chapter/section updates when they are received from the publisher. Select Books@Ovid and pull down "limit to Books" to browse the available eBooks including many of the current Washington Manuals. To download a PDF file select the View in Book Reader button to access the eBook. Then select the green arrow to view the available Tools. Export to PDF is one of the available Tools. Learn more about the new interface.

Cambridge Books Online
WU Libraries purchase these titles selectively.
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Use information
Formats: pdf
Download/Print: display, download, and print for personal use, limited by copyright and fair use
Ereaders: download the pdf and use some pdf converter of your choice
Lending: yes, with some restrictions
CHEMnetBASE
Major chemical reference works from Chapman & Hall/CRC, searchable and browsable.
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More info
CRCnetBase
Now forwards to Taylor & Francis platform. Over 6,000 books in many disciplines. Most science & technology books published by CRC Press or Chapman & Hall are included; some textbooks are excluded. Fulltext search available.
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More info
ProQuest Ebook Central
EBL includes books from many publishers. Some titles are available for short-term loan and some have been purchased by WU Libraries. You can limit your search to titles that are available at WU. WUSTL key and password are required for access.
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Use information
More information is available under Help/Feedback when you enter the EBL system.

Formats: image, pdf, Adobe Digital editions; your personal notes can be saved.

Download/Print: display, download, or print out, for your own research or study only; restrictions on each ebook limit the amount of content that you can print and copy when you read an ebook online. Printing is restricted to 20% of each ebook, and copying 5%. Similar restrictions apply when you read ebooks offline. Remaining print/copy balances can be viewed for each ebook on the Details tab in the Online Reader. The EBL Print Screen will also tally your remaining print balance while you print.

Ereaders: In general, devices using Windows or Mac operating systems, Android-based devices, and the Nook are compatible. The Kindle is currently not supported. View the compatibility list for mobile devices and apps compatible with EBL titles. Downloading EBL eBooks requires the installation of either Adobe Digital Editions or a free Apple Store app such as Bluefire Reader. An Adobe ID username and password (free) is required to transfer EBL ebooks to a Nook.

Lending: no, authenticated WU users only
eBook Collection (Ebscohost)
Search or browse the ebooks purchased or subscribed by Washington University Libraries on this interface. Note: Titles in eMO subset are not available at School of Medicine.
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Use information
More information about eMO and other purchased ebooks on Ebsco

More information from Ebsco

Formats: display on web; I think these are Adobe digital editions format

Download/Print: printing has strict limits, approx. 15 pages/title; you may bookmark/permalink and you may create a sign in for adding notes; mostly you need to read on the web

Ereaders: no

Lending: no
Knovel Library
Over 600 major science and technical reference books and databases from major Sci-tech publishers including John Wiley & Sons, McGraw-Hill and Elsevier. This data is enhanced with time-saving analytical tools to help analyze and manipulate the data.
National Academies Press
Freely available PDFs of reports that are currently for sale on the National Academies Press (NAP) Website and PDFs associated with future reports.
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Use information

Formats: pdf files, individual chapters or whole books

Download/Print: display, download, or print out; More info

Ereaders: PDF files can usually be downloaded a converted for ereader use

Lending: freely available files
NCBI Bookshelf
Free access to books and documents in life science and healthcare; full text fully searchable. Some titles may not be browsed; you can only view contents after you search. Some titles are selected chapters only and not the full book.
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Use information

Formats: html files; for titles accessible by search-only html is the only available format; for some titles, sections are available as pdf files and figures/tables are available as ppt files

Download/Print: display, download, or print out

Ereaders: where available, PDF and HTML files can be downloaded and converted for ereader use

Lending: freely available files
Oxford Scholarship Online
WU has purchased Classical Studies collections and selected titles in the Neuroscience and Law collections.
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Use information
Formats: pdf and html files
Download/Print: display, download, and print out an individual chapter or 5% of book whichever is greater; Legal notice
Ereaders: download the pdf and use some pdf converter of your choice; see limitations above
Lending: yes, interlibrary loan may loan chapter printouts with certain restrictions
Safari Books Online
Please logoff (Lower right corner or top right under WU user) after use; 8 concurrent users allowed. Over 12,000 full-text books on computing, databases, networking, operating systems, programming, software engineering, .NET, Cisco products, Web design, Java, XML and more. It is fully searchable - even for snippets of code.
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Use information
Formats: Content viewer files require Adobe flash; image-based print fidelity files available if you don’t have Adobe flash; html files of chapters also available
If you register for a free personal academic account, you may use the highlighting and notes features of the content viewer
Download/Print: no download feature available to users of WU account; print sections for your own use; fullscale printing of entire books is prohibited
Ereaders: not for download but ereaders with browsers can access online books with mobile Safari site and Safari To Go iPad app is not available to institutional account users.
Lending: no
ScienceDirect
WU Libraries and WU Medical Library purchase these titles selectively or in packages. Instructions for ScienceDirect ePub & Mobi downloads
SPIE Digital Library
Over 150 titles in optics & photonics
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Use information
Formats: pdf files of chapters
Download/Print: download and print pdf file for your own use | SPIE Digital Library Quick Start Guide
Ereaders: using pdf converter of your choice
Lending: yes with some restrictions
Springer eBooks
WU has purchased these packages:
(2005-2007 only) Behavioral Science
(2005 + ) Biomedical & Life Sciences, Computer Science, Mathematics & Statistics, Medicine
(1984+) SpringerProtocols (now part of Springer Nature Experiments)
(2017+) Physics and Astronomy
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SpringerProtocols also has it's own site.
Wiley Online Library
Books purchased selectively. This site also includes fulltext access to journals, reference books, and other Wiley resources.
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Use information
Formats: pdf
Download/Print: display, download, and print for personal use, limited by copyright and fair use
Ereaders: download the pdf and use some pdf converter of your choice
Lending: yes with some restrictions

Ebook search tools

Bookserver (Internet Archive)
Center for Research Libraries Digital Catalog
Digitized versions for more than 16,000 titles; available to users at CRL member libraries only; WUSTL is a CRL member library.
ConneXions
Freely available digital education materials, books, chapters, modules, papers
Cornell University Digital Collections
Digitized books on agriculture, bee-keeping, home economics, andmore.
Digital Public Library of America
Directory of Open Access Books - DOAB
Dissertations
eBook (& ejournal) holdings at WU
eBook holdings at WUSTL Becker Medical Library
Some are WUSM only but many are available to all WU users
Google Books
HathiTrust Digital Library
OER (Open Educational Resources) Commons
Knowledge base around the use and reuse of open educational resources; OER Commons collection providers
Online Books Page
Open Library
Open Textbook Library (compiled at Univ. of Minnesota)
Tool to help instructors find affordable, quality textbook solutions. All textbooks in this library are complete and openly licensed.
Patent Sources
Project Gutenberg - Engineering Bookshelf
Project Gutenberg - Science Bookshelves
U.S. Federal Government Portals

Math Ebooks

Most of these links are digitizing projects containing older materials. They are generally NOT included in our catalog unless specifically requested. They are often not included in the general ebook sites either.

Ebooks keyed in LaTeX are fairly rare. Books added recently to Project Gutenberg sometimes have a LaTeX source file. More info in October, 2011, Notices of the AMS, letter by Andrew D. Hwang.

AMS Books Online
These titles should be in the WUSTL catalogs.
Archimedes Project
Traces the basic mental models of mechanical knowledge and their development across a large historical time span, including medieval mathematics and renaissance Aristotelianism. Click on Sources for more information at this site.
Connexions - Mathematics & Statistics
fulltext books and course modules
Historical Mathematics Collection
from University of Michigan
Historical Monographs Collection
from Cornell University Library

WashU Libraries

eBooks/Online Book Collections

Reference Ebooks and Individual Ebook Titles

Some ebook packages and sites for science & engineering

Ebook search tools

Math Ebooks