Cal Poly

Finding eBooks

Cal Poly purchases access to e-books from several different eBook providers:

netLibrary

Provides access to scholarly, academic, trade and professional books. Subject areas include business, computer science, economics, education, information technology, psychology, reference, the sciences, and the social sciences. There is also a collection public domain books that include classic works of literature, as well as other titles.

Safari Tech Books Online

This database includes technology books from O'Reilly Media and Pearson, including topics like certification, enterprise computing, Java, Linux/Unix, Web development, Windows, XML, and more.

ACLS Humanities E-books

Provides full-text and full-page-image access to titles in most humanities disciplines and in area studies. The books included have been recommended by scholars as significant contributions to their respective fields. Offered by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) in collaboration with ten learned societies and nearly 80 contributing publishers.

Open Access (Free) E-books

There are also many other e-books freely available on the web. These are primarily older books, which are no longer protected by copyright laws. However, some sources offer previews of newer books, and can be a great way to discover what books are available on a topic.

Google Book Search

This highly successful project has seen Google partner with libraries to scan books and make them available online. Note, however, that only those books no longer protected by copyright are fully available online. In most cases you will be allowed only a short preview of the book. This is still a great source to identify potential books and read a sample to learn if the book will be useful to you. You can then return to the library to locate the book itself. Use PolyCat to check if we have it at the library, and if not, request it via Interlibrary Loan.

Internet Archive Text Archive

The Internet Archive is a non-profit working to build an Internet library offering permanent access to digital historical collections. At the Text Archive section of this website you'll find online versions of many classic texts. Sub-collections to investigate include the Universal Library Project (also known as the Million Books Project), and Project Gutenberg.

E-Books in PolyCat

You can search for many e-books in PolyCat. Any search you run will search for e-books as well as traditional printed books. However, if you wish to search for e-books only, you can follow these steps:

1. Type in: ebook and (subject goes here)
2. Look at the list of results. Click on the underlined title of the eBook to learn more about it.
3. Navigate to the e-book by clicking on the link in the yellow box (will say "view the online version" or "connect to this resource online")