Netlibrary is a division of OCLC. Our account through Minitex offers 3400 public domain and 11730 copyrighted ebooks. Individual libraries can purchase additional items. Netlibrary has a page that lets you see all the titles available for purchase called Titleselect.
Last year, Minitex' Netlibrary account was accessed 896,300 times. Business, economics and management are the most popular subjects. The average time patrons spend in a book is 11 minutes, which suggests that people are using it more for research than reading for pleasure. At this time, there are no books from 2008 and only three from 2007 (this may be problematic for computer manuals). Books in the Cliff's Notes and Complete Idiots series are available on Netlibrary.
Netlibrary accounts must be created through the ELM portal (click on Ebooks & Books) or at the library before the patron can access them via Netlibrary.com. Other patrons cannot access an ebook while you are viewing it, but there is a 15 minute time-out. The default search option is full-text rather than keyword, which might be confusing for some people. The interface language can be changed to one of nine different languages including Spanish, French and Chinese.
Things that can be done with these ebooks that can't be done with print books include the following: search in book, create notes for a book, add books to favorites, save a particular page, and click on links in the index (for most books)
For more information, the handouts are available here .
--Andrea
