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Comparison of E-Book Collections

September 21, 2009

E-Book Collections are taking off in libraries and private subscriptions, but how to they compare? What follows is a work in progress based on perceptions of the Librarians at Drexel University's Hagerty Library of the e-book platforms we use. It was created for a presentation to faculty about the growing e-book options available through the Library as part of the Institute on Innovation in Training and Teaching conducted by the Drexel Office of Information Resources and Technology, September 10-11, 2009. (starting at slide 72)

E-Book Collections

In a Nutshell

Pros

Cons
141 Medicine & Science Items Lots of core medical textbooks, good graphics & basic definitions

No downloads, hard to print, must be online to use.

8,284 Business & InfoTech Items in HTML Depth of IT books in the 'ITPro' collection.

No downloads, hard to print, must be online to use.

32,000 Items on All topics

Breadth of collection. 'PDF-like' hi-fidelity.

No downloads, hard to print, must be online to use.

???

It's free.

Some downloads, hard to print, must be online to use. Omits pages.

1,576 Engineering Items in PDF Depth of data in the handbooks. True PDF's are downloadable.
3,688 Engineering Items in PDF Depth of data in the handbooks. True PDF's are downloadable.
18,643 Business & InfoTech Items in HTML

Breadth of collection . Not much else.

No downloads, hard to print, must be online to use.
923 InfoTech Items in HTML Core IT manuals from all main publishers. Code search option. No downloads, hard to print, must be online to use.
Please help us evaluate Drexel's electronic book collections and fill in the blanks below. Use the comment feature or email comments to siftar@drexel.edu. Coming soon! A comparison of features in the following open-source EBook platforms... ACLS Humanities Ebooks Alex Catalog of Electronic Texts Baen Free Library Bartleby.com Bibliomania Eighteenth Century Collections Online Free On-line Library Health Information for International Travel 2008 Internet Archive Texts Internet History Sourcebooks Project Internet Public Library On Line Texts Online Library of Literature Perseus Digital Library Project Gutenberg University of California Press eScholarship Editions University of Pennsylvania On-Line Books Library University of Virginia Electronic Text Center