How do I find books?

The UNVA Book Catalog lists the books available at the UNVA Library in Manassas. You can search by title, author or subject. Books are categorized by Library of Congress Call Numbers. For more information, visit the Library of Congress website: http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/lcco/

How do I find electronic books?

UNVA has access to three electronic book (e-book) libraries. They are: ebrary, EBL books, and Safari.

EBL requires that you create your own account, but you will be able to save titles to your shelf. To access ebrary, simply input your UNVA student ID when promted.

Requesting EBL account

When you click on the link in the Online Library, you will be taken to a log-in screen. If you don’t already have an account, you will need to request one.

Here is the form for requesting an account. Please note that you must use your UNVA email address. Any requests from other email addresses (Gmail, Yahoo, etc) will be rejected.

When your account is approved you will receive an email that your account is now activated. Now you can log in using the ID and password that you have chosen.

ebl

This is the basic search screen for EBL. After you create your account, you can Quick Search for title, author, ISBN, or keyword. Other options are available below the search field. This information applies to the other e-book websites.

This is the list of categories to browse. If you are not sure of a title or author, you can look at subjects to start your search.

ebrary

This is the main search screen for ebrary. You can also use the Advanced Search option or browse subjects.

This list of subjects is much smaller than EBL. Each e-book site will have a different focus.

Safari business & tech books

As the name implies, Safari focuses on business and technology books.

As with the other sites, you have the options of Basic and Advanced searches, as well as browsing categories. There is a list of featured categories, but you can also choose to look at all Business or IT books.

Searching ebooks The searching techniques are very similar to

the databases. You can search by title, author, ISBN, which is an identification number for all books.

You can also search by subject. The databases should all have ways to narrow your search, just like the databases.

Can I download any of the ebooks? Short answer: NO. Long answer: Only from EBL, and only for a

limited time period. You “check out” ebooks from EBL typically for 24 hours. (You may request a longer lending period if you’re going to be using the book often over a period of 3-7 days.)

While the book is checked out to you, it is available for download and transfer to your choice of ebook readers or smartphones.

The file will expire after the lending period is over.

Can I get textbooks from these sites? Unfortunately, NO.

Textbook publishers want to make money- they need you to buy the book. They do not sell their books or allow other sites to buy them for library usage.

That doesn’t mean that there are not thousands of other books that you can use for your papers and other research!

So where do I get textbooks? The textbook information is available when you

register for classes. No price information is given since this can vary greatly. The book list is also available in Moodle:

This is on the left side of the page.

You can rent textbooks from Chegg or CampusBookRentals. You can also get an electronic copy of your textbook from CourseSmart.

You can also purchase new or used copies from a variety of websites, including Amazon or ebay.