Digital Rights Management (DRM) ebooks

The two major e-book providers at VU are Ebook Central, and EBSCO eBooks.  All the books accessed through these providers are protected by a Digital Rights Management system (DRM). DRM is a system which regulates the usage of digital content. It limits the loan period for downloading and the number of pages that can be printed or copied.

Additional specialised software is required when you want to read the downloaded copy of a DRM protected book.

Non DRM ebooks

There are other e-book providers that allow pdf chapters (and in some cases whole books) to be downloaded without any specialised software requirement. See the following list.

Printing from other ebook providers

The following e-book providers allow you to print pdf chapters of a book and in some cases the whole book without installing any specialised software.

• Books@Ovid (formerly Ovid Nursing Books)
• Cambridge ebooks
• Gale Virtual Reference Library
• ICE virtual library
• JSTOR e-books
• OECD iLibrary 2005-2018
• Oxford Reference
• Sage Catalyst
• Sage Knowledge
• ScienceDirect 
• SPIE Digital Library eBooks
• SpringerLink 
• Taylor & Francis
• Wiley

Downloading ebooks to a desktop or laptop

Downloading ebooks to a tablet or a smart phone

To download e-books from the Library website in ePub or PDF format to a tablet or smart phone you need to first download the Adobe Digital Editions app. You can also do this from the App store on your device.

Note: If you would like to access the downloaded copy of a book on multiple devices then you will need to create an Adobe ID to authorise the reader. You can skip this step if only reading the downloaded copy on one device.