E-Books Are Ready
For Cowles Library Users

By Elizabeth Owens
CyberNews Staff Reporter

March 6, 2002

Drake students can now visit the library without ever leaving their dorm rooms. Drake's collection of e-books allows students to enter Cowles Library through their computers. E-books are electronic versions of printed books found at the Cowles Library home page.

"We've had e-books for about a year now," Marcia Keyser, coordinator of information services at Cowles Library, said. "E-books are one way computers are making books more useful."

Drake's e-books are provided through netLibrary and can be accessed through the Cowles Library home page, www.lib.drake.edu, by clicking on "Resources and References," then "Electronic Databases" and finally scrolling down to "netLibrary."

The first time a student uses netLibary an account must be set up. The student will have to choose a user name and a password. The Web site will automatically register the first-time user as a Drake student because he or she is logging on through the Cowles Library home page.

"You can log onto netLibrary from anywhere using the ID you set up here, and it will know you are a Drake student," Keyser said.

Drake acquired its initial assortment of e-books through Iowa Private Academic Libraries.

"We pay for it by subscription through a consortium called IPAL," Keyser said.

Drake has approximately 5,000 titles available. The e-books are non-fiction and cover an array of academic topics. Drake plans to add more e-books to its collection in the near future.

"We started out with a consortium collection, but we are now adding to it title-by-title to meet the needs of the campus," Keyser said.

Built-in software keeps students from printing out the books, but students are able to access the e-books for free anywhere they have an Internet connection.

"Portability is the main advantage to them right now," Keyser said.

Another advantage to e-books is that overdue books are a thing of the past. Students can gain exclusive access to an e-book by checking it out for a specified length of time. According to netLibrary.com, "You don't have to worry about returning them. E-books are automatically returned at the the end of your checkout period."

NetLibrary still doesn't solve the problem of more than one student wanting to check out the same book at the same time. When a student checks out an e-book, he or she is the only reader allowed access to that book during the checkout period.

E-books may not offer solutions to all problems, but they do offer students with computers an easy way to do research.

"It's taking the book and making us able to deliver it to you," Keyser said. "You don't have to come to the library to get the book, which is convenient."

Keyser has only been at Cowles Library for two months and part of her new job is to make students aware of the resources they have available, such as e-books.

"Part of my job is to start promoting stuff like this," Keyser said. "We need to start promoting it better."