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HIST 121: The Black Experience: Finding eBooks

Introduction

The library has a wide variety of eBooks available in our collection for your research. You can search for them in a few ways, including using SpartaCat (the NCC Library Catalog), EBSCO Discovery Service, or by searching specific eBook collections directly. 

Finding eBooks using SpartaCat

Basic Searching in SpartaCat

Words or phrase: If you are looking for a general topic (like "global warming"), it is best to start here. It will search the title, summary, table of contents, and publication information of each of our books for that word or phrase.

Author: If you are looking for books by a specific person, search here. For example, if you want to find books by Edgar Allan Poe, enter his name like this: Poe, Edgar Allan.

Title: If you know the specific title of a work, enter it here. For example, if you want a copy of the book On the Road, enter that title in this search box. 

Subject: Search the Subject Headings list. These are like #hashtags. They are the main word or phrase used to catalog the book and reflect what it is about.

 

Finding eBooks 

After you choose the type of search and enter your search terms (keywords), a little bit further down the screen, change type to Electronic Books by selecting it from the drop-down menu there.

In the results, eBooks will be tagged with the words Electronic Resource and their location will be Online.

 

Accessing our eBooks

To view an eBook from the search results page, click on the link labeled URL.

This URL link also appears on the eBook's Item Details (or summary) page.

 

Clicking this link will open the eBook in a new screen. You may be prompted to login with your MyNCC username and password before you can begin reading the book. 

Watch our SpartaCat eBooks Tutorial to see a demonstration. 

Spotlight on Library eBook Collections

You can search individual eBook collections directly as well. They're listed below, but also look for them on our Databases A to Z and Databases by Category (see Electronic Books) pages.  

Highlighted Free eBook Collections on the Internet

There are many free, open access, publicly available eBooks collections on the Internet. Here are some of the most popular ones used for academic research: