To find ebooks available through the Cullom-Library Davis, you'll start in the library catalog. This is also where you'll find some streaming video available through the library. To access the catalog, you can start your search from the Books+ tab and search box on the homepage; you can click any of the catalog links below the search box; or you can find Library Catalog under the Find, Borrow, Request menu.
Once inside the catalog, you can type keywords related to your topic into the search boxes, then hit the search button.
This will bring up a mixture of everything the library has to offer - ebooks and streaming video as well as physical books and DVDs. To limit your results to only materials that are available online, you can make use of the filtering options on the left under "Tweak Your Results." The most important of these is under "Availability" - select "Available Online" and then hit the "Apply Filters" button that appears.
Now all of your results should be available online. Under the title of each results, you should see a link that says "Available Online" that will provide you with access to the online materials. You may also see "[number]versions found", which indicates that the library has physical copies as well. If you click on the "versions found" link it will show you all your options, including the "available online" link.
After you have limited your results to "Available Online," you can filter them even further. If you are looking specifically for ebooks or for streaming video, click on "Resource Type" on the left and select the option that you're looking for.
The video tutorial below gives more information about how to search within the library catalog for books, video, and other resources.
Scholarly books are similar to peer-reviewed (aka scholarly!) articles in that they are written by experts in the field in order to share their research with a wider audience. Scholarly books are a way for scholars to go deeper into their topics than an article would allow. Some of the indicators of a scholarly book will be findable in the book itself; some things you will have to research on your own to discover.
You should be able to find the author's name and at least a short biography or "About the Author" section. However, these can be quite brief and may not give you a clear picture of the author's expertise. It is worth it to search for more information about the author outside of the book; specifically
Scholarly works are usually published by publishers who specialize in academic content. These may be university presses (which are publishers attached to specific universities, and may publish on many academic topics) or publishers who focus on covering one or more related academic or professional fields. As with authors, it is worth it to search for more information about the publisher, including:
Similarly to scholarly journal articles, scholarly books are often written following a specific sort of approach. The purpose of scholarly books is to inform the audience of information from the field in question, including the findings of research. For some fields, this may not entail the results of studies, but rather what was found through studying and synthesizing primary and secondary sources on the topic (eg, a history book exploring how death was treated during the Civil War by examining letters, funeral programs, newspapers, etc.) Some of the hallmarks of scholarly books include:
If you are searching for a specific book, first make sure you have as much information about the book as possible, including not just the title but the author's name and year of publication. Then, make your way to the library catalog from the library homepage (the link is in the left-hand menu).
Once you have entered and signed into the catalog, type the title of your book into the search bar. If the title of the book is unique enough, this might be enough to bring up the book you need.
If your book title is common or ambiguous, however, you may need to use advanced search to narrow it down. Find the Advanced Search link to the right of the search box.
Advanced search will let you specify where you would like your keywords to be found. You can specify to search for your title words only in the titles of works; you can also search for the author's name only in the author field. This can help find your specific book among others that have similar titles or descriptions.
In this example, a simple search for "selected poems" brought back over 500 results, whereas an advanced search searching for a specific title and author brough back one result, which was the book in question.