by Linda Lewis
Daily Lobo Guest Columnist
The first electronic resources the library offered were indexes, followed by databases that included complete periodical articles.
Finally electronic cover-to-cover journals became available. Now we have electronic books (e-books) that can be read on any computer and do not require special equipment. Some collections may require that you download special software, or that you register in order to use special services.
When e-books first appeared, people said:
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
They'll replace all printed books
They'll never be accepted
They'll be free - or at least cheaper than print books
All three predictions were wrong. Print books continue to thrive in most subject areas. However, electronic books are becoming very commercially successful in some areas, especially in reference and technology.
Most e-books cost as much or more than their print versions, but they are always available 24/7 for home or office and never checked out! They are not lost or misshelved, and do take less space (but require more equipment) for libraries and patrons.
What e-books do we have now?
NetLibrary supplies electronic books from major publishers. These books are the digital versions of the printed editions, including illustrations in nearly all cases. UNM has purchased more than 1,000 titles: some of them published by UNM Press, some of them about New Mexico and the Southwest, and some general materials related to the West, Native American studies and Hispanic studies.
CogNet: A growing collection of searchable electronic texts for cognitive and brain sciences. The collection contains works from the MIT Press, as well as content and links to resources from other publishers, professional associations, institutions, and individuals who are willing to share public access to online work.
Early English Books Online: This is a rich source of primary source material for the time. From the first book printed in English by William Caxton, through the age of Spenser and Shakespeare and the tumult of the English Civil War, this collection contains more than 125,000 titles of English literature from 1475-1700.
Early American Imprints: This collection contains items published in America before 1800; mainly what is now the United States. It is the definitive resource for information about every aspect of life in 17th- and 18th-century America, yielding important primary resource material from agriculture and foreign affairs, through literature, music, religion, the Revolutionary War and multiple other topics.
How do we access these e-books?
Links to each of the collections are found in the Research Databases & Indexes list, one of the Quicklinks on the General Library's homepage (http://eLibrary.unm.edu/). Access to the individual titles of the netLibrary, CogNet and Early English Books Online collections is available through LIBROS, our online catalog. The individual titles for the Early American Imprints will be added to LIBROS sometime in 2004.
We have a few tips for those of you who want to access e-books: 1. Take a few minutes to look through the help screens to make the best use of these resources. 2. Be sure to correctly cite these materials in your bibliographies. (Under Quicklinks on the General Library's homepage, use the Electronic Reference Shelf to find Style Manuals that will show you how to cite electronic resources.) 3. Feel free to ask the reference librarian at any of the libraries to show you how to search for these electronic resources.
Important announcement for students: April 21 to May 16, Zimmerman's electronic classroom, Room 254, will be used as a student computer lab on weekdays between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. when it is not scheduled for classes. Lobo ID's will be checked.
Linda Lewis is the director of collection management
