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Teaching Online - General Resources for Faculty

Textbooks

It is unclear at this time, whether our reserve or print textbook collections will be available to students in the Fall. We will not be purchasing electronic equivalents of our print textbook collection as it would be cost prohibitive. Prices for e-books are 2x to 10x the cost of print books, and usually restricted to one or three simultaneous users. It is highly unlikely we will be purchasing any new textbooks for the Fall semester.

It is strongly recommended that faculty use existing electronic resources in library databases or use Open Access or OER (Open Education Resources) for teaching in the Fall. We can help you do that.

  • We have many e-books and some textbooks in e-book format.
  • You can use journal articles, and book chapters to create anthologies of required readings.
  • You can use permalinks to link library e-resources in Moodle and syllabi.

For help in finding e-books to use with your classes, contact your liaison.

Here is a list of titles in our print textbook collection that are available online.

Springer E-Books and Textbooks

The College Libraries has purchased into perpetuity several Springer e-book collections, roughly 93,000 titles. Below is a list of subject collections we have purchased listed by publishing year. These books are findable in our QuickSearch discovery. Springer permalinks lack our proxy server prefix, so you will need to edit them to create usable links from off-campus.

2005-2012 

  • Behavioral Science
  • Biomedical and Life Science
  • Business and Economics
  • Chemistry and Materials Science
  • Computer Science
  • Earth and Environmental Science
  • Engineering
  • Humanities, Social Science & Law
  • Mathematics and Statistics
  • Medicine
  • Physics and Astronomy
  • Professional Computing and applied Computing

2013-2019

  • Behavioral Science and Psychology
  • Biomedical and Life Science
  • Business and Management
  • Chemistry and Materials Science
  • Computer Science
  • Earth and Environmental Science
  • Economics and Finance
  • Education
  • Energy
  • Engineering
  • Mathematics and Statistics
  • Medicine
  • Physics and Astronomy
  • Professional and applied Computing

 

Search tips: The Springer interface is not user-friendly. Here are some suggestions:

  • Un-check the box for "Include Preview-Only content" BEFORE you search a term
  • Limit to English

Try these search keywords:

  • introduction 
  • undergraduate
  • survey
  • course
  • anthology
  • handbook
  • basic
  • principles
  • beginners

Download an Excel spreadsheet of Springer textbooks (4900 titles). Use the filters to sort by Subject Collection Name (column F), and by Readership Level (column D)

Ebook Central (Proquest)

We have access to ~200,000 e-books in Ebook Central. There are a few textbooks, but the collection consists mostly of academic e-books with some popular non-fiction. Most of the e-books have unlimited access, meaning an unlimited number of students can access the book at the same time. These titles will display in Quick Search with the collection name: "Ebook Central Academic Complete."

There are a few exceptions. We have a select number of books (1174 titles) that have single user limits. These titles display in Quick Search with the collection name "Ebook Central." Use has been expanded during the pandemic to unlimited, until June 30th. After June 30th, the number of simultaneous users will drop to a single user. Here is an Excel list of the 1174 titles.

After June 30th, make sure the availability says "unlimited." New titles are added to this subscription every month. Occasionally titles are deleted by publishers 2x year (June and December).

 

Availability "Your institution has unlimited accss to this book"

 

Most of the books in Ebook Central are searchable in Quick Search. Sometimes the subject heading "textbooks" is assigned, but more often there are no terms or tags to identify textbooks in most of our databases, but Ebook Central interface has some pretty good search and management features.

Start with an Advanced Search

LC Subject Heading = Biology (or other broad subject term like Art History, or Philosophy)

In the second row, "Keyword & Full Text" use keywords (one at a time) to search book descriptions that would indicate a textbook:

  • introduction 
  • undergraduate
  • survey
  • course
  • anthology
  • handbook
  • basic
  • principles
  • beginners
  • subject heading=textbooks

Click on a title to display the full record.

Under Book Details on the right, click show more. Check to see if the publisher is academic. You won't find Pearson or Cengage titles, but  there are other publishers like Wiley and MacMillan. Look to see what LC subject headings assigned to the book. Redo your search using those subject terms to find similar books.

Some of the most useful features of Ebook Central:

  • Add book titles to your bookshelf so they will be there every time you log in
  • Add bookmarks to pages you want to revisit
  • Add notes and comments (like writing in the margins)
  • Citation generator
  • Permalinks to specific chapters and pages

 

College Libraries QuickSearch Search Strategies

QuickSearch includes Springer and Ebook Central titles, plus OER textbooks.

 

Do an Advanced Search in Quick Search.

  • Make sure you are searching "Everything"
  • Change "Material Type" to Books

Do a Subject search (e.g. Biology) combined with at title or Keyword search using common keywords found in textbooks:

  • introduction
  • a course in
  • short course
  • first course
  • handbook or handbooks
  • beginner's guide
  • basics

Use the facets in the left panel to limit your search:

  • Available Online
  • Language = English

Open Textbooks

See the discipline specific pages for open textbooks for specific subject areas

Contact

Crumb Library: 315-267-2485
Crane Library: 315-267-2451

Text Us! (Mon-Fri, 10 - 4): 315-277-3730

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SUNY Potsdam College Libraries
44 Pierrepont Ave
Potsdam, NY 13617
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