Using netLibrary Electronic Books

The SFU Library has access to approximately 7000 electronic books (ebooks) from netLibrary in the:

• Simon Fraser University Collection of more than approximately 3700 ebooks.
  • These books have been purchased by the SFU Library on your behalf.
• netLibrary Public Collection of more than 3500 classic ebooks.
  • These books, which are in the public domain, are accessible by all researchers at all libraries that have purchased access to netLibrary.

SFU faculty, staff and students can read these ebooks online over the Web.

For more assistance see the Help link on the netLibrary page or report problems to libhelp@sfu.ca.

Find netLibrary books

• The SFU Library catalogue lists all of the books in the Simon Fraser University Collection
  • From within the Library's catalogue, you can retrieve records for netLibrary books by typing in a word/keyword search or an author search using the word "netLibrary"
  • The netLibrary Public Collection is not listed in the Library's catalogue
• To search both the Simon Fraser University Collection and the netLibrary Public Collection, use the netLibrary link available on the Library's alphabetical list of databases

Read online

Once you have found an ebook you are interested in you can view the fulltext online. After 15 minutes of inactivity (not touching your keyboard, not moving forward or backward in the ebook, etc.) your netLibrary session will time out and you will be returned to the netLibrary "start" or "home" page.

As of September 2006, netLibrary no longer supports the option to "check out" an ebook.

The SFU library does not support any kind of "offline" viewing or checking out of the ebook.

Only one user may view a netLibrary ebook at a time. If you are trying to access a title currently in use by another patron, you will see the following notice:

If you request to be notified when the title is available, you will move to a different page where you will enter your email address.

As of March 2007, NetLibrary supports the following browsers:

• Internet Explorer 5.5 and above
• Netscape 6.2 and above
• Mozilla 1.1 and above
• Firefox 1.0 and above
• Opera 7.0 and above

Print and copy

netLibrary allows you to print one page at a time from an eBook. You can print the page you are viewing by clicking the Print icon in the Adobe Acrobat toolbar, or using the print function in your browser.

netLibrary allows you to copy selections of text from the page you are viewing by using the Select tool in the Adobe Acrobat toolbar, or the copy function in your browser.

Printing all of an eBook title violates copyright laws. If a suspicious usage pattern indicating excessive printing or copying is detected, the activity is logged and you are sent a copyright warning message.

Create account for Favorites and Notes

As SFU faculty, staff or students you can create a netLibrary account which will allow you to add netLibrary books to a list of your netLibrary favourites and enter online notes about those books on the netLibrary site.

• Select "Create a Free account"
• Provide the required information
• Click on "Create Account"

To access an existing netLibrary account, click on the "Favorites and Notes" link.