Looking for an electronic version of your textbook/book? Follow the steps below*.
Search our Library holdings first: OneSearch is where you will find most of our ebooks. Click here for login instructions.
If that is unsuccessful, search these collections where you have expanded free access to thousands of ebooks during the COVID-19 crisis:
EBSCOhost ebook Academic Collection
VitalSource (register for a free account before you begin searching)
Open Library and National Emergency Library, both from the Internet Archive, are good sources for books that may not be available elsewhere. You do not need an account to search their collections, but you will need to create one to either read on the Internet Archive book reader or download to epub/pdf.
Lastly, you may check other sources listed in this guide under Digital Textbooks, COVID-19 Temporary and Free Resource Materials, Open Access eBook Sources and the New York Public Library.
Or you may request a chapter from an ebook or an entire ebook via interlibrary loan. Please allow time for this option as several libraries are short-staffed and closed. We cannot guarantee that your request will be filled, but we will try our best to find a supplier.
*Please remember, not all published materials are available in electronic form! If you cannot find an online version for a particular source your professor has assigned, please contact them directly. You may also fill out an eBook Search Request Form or contact a librarian.
Looking for electronic access to a specific book you need while the library is online only? Feel free to DIY (do it yourself) by using the steps outlined in the DIY Finding eBooks box above.
You may also complete our eBook Search Request Form to have a Lloyd Sealy librarian search on your behalf. We will do our best to determine if you have access to an electronic copy of the book. We will be in touch with you as soon as we have completed a thorough search.
Please note, however, that not every print book has an electronic equivalent.
In addition to our DYI Finding eBooks box in this guide, here is an additional listing of temporarily available free access to publisher and other institutional sites that may have a particular book for which you are looking. You may need to register or create an account to access materials. Please be mindful that these links are for limited time access:
Remote access to content temporarily freely available.
Access to HTML textbooks, Cambridge Histories, Cambridge Companions, and Cambridge Elements--over 2000 Cambridge University Press titles. Access is available through 29th June, 2020.
Ebook Central Collection (formerly Ebrary)
Thousands of ebooks on scholarly subjects. Covers a range of disciplines, including some science. During the COVID-19 outbreak, single/limited user access has been suspended.
EBSCOhost ebook Academic Collection
Expanded access to thousands of ebooks across the disciplines available through June 20, 2020
All titles available through June 2020
Expanded access to thousands of ebooks through June 2020.
Digital lending library where users are offered free access to a collection of books to "support emergency remote teaching, research activities, independent scholarship, and intellectual stimulation while universities, schools, training centers, and libraries are closed." Collection focuses on 20th century materials, including 1.4 million titles. Titles unavailable elsewhere may be available here. Borrowing period is 2 weeks.
Norton Anthology of World Literature
Norton Anthology of World Literature is available for the rest of the semester when submitting a Support Ticket Request on their webpage. Other Norton titles may also be available if you request a specific one.
The Association of University Presses offers access to a wide variety of resources, books, and journals to support student learning and scholarly research in this difficult time. View their list of free resources and periods of availability from University presses.
Expert briefings on macro-economic and geopolitical events, prepared for global political and business leaders to help understand the implications and influence decision-making. Available through June 2020.
Paris Musées, a collection of 14 museums in Paris, offer free access to high-res digital copies of 100,000 artworks from their collections. Artists include Rembrandt, Monet, Picasso, Cézanne, and thousands of others.
Project MUSE --In response to the crisis of COVID-19, Project MUSE is making content from several dozen scholarly publishers temporarily available for free.
Unlimited access to previously single-user and three-user items through mid-June for titles from over 50 publishers.
Expanded access to all reference ebooks through June 24, 2020
Free access to ScienceDirect textbooks available for 90 days.
Over 1,000 ebooks from the CRCnetBase database collections including FORENSICnetBASE, InfoSECURITYnetBASE, AND STATSnetBASE.
Free-to-read titles until June 30, 2020. Please note titles are only downloadable, with the exception of some that are open access.
FREE access to digital textbooks until May 25th, 2020. You may access up to seven free eBooks. You will need to create a VitalSource account before you search for textbooks. Click here for their video help for creating your account. Visit their Frequently Asked Questions page for answers to what devices to use, how to download and print, etc.
NOTE for faculty: Some ebooks do not allow for an unlimited number of simultaneous users. Before assigning an ebook to an entire class, please check the title to determine how many users can simultaneously access the ebook. Ebook Central is lifting these restrictions during the COVID-19 outbreak.
Digital Public Library of America (DPLA)
DPLA connects people to the riches held within America’s libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural heritage institutions. All of the materials found through DPLA—photographs, books, maps, news footage, oral histories, personal letters, museum objects, artwork, government documents, and so much more—are free and immediately available in digital format.
DOAB (Directory of Open Access Books) provides open access to over 854 Academic peer-reviewed books from 25 publishers.
DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals) is a collection of peer-reviewed open access e-journals
a repository providing access to public domain and in-copyright content from a variety of sources, including Google, the Internet Archive, Microsoft, and in-house partner institution initiatives.
The Internet Archive offers over 20,000,000 freely downloadable books and texts. There is also a collection of 1.3 million modern eBooks that may be borrowed by anyone with a free archive.org account.
free online access to ebooks and documents in life sciences and healthcare.
library of over 60,000 free eBooks. Choose among free epub and Kindle eBooks, download them or read them online. You will find the world's great literature here, with focus on older works for which U.S. copyright has expired. Thousands of volunteers digitized and diligently proofread the eBooks, for enjoyment and education.
open access ebooks from university presses and scholarly societies.
The Standard Ebooks project is a volunteer driven, not-for-profit effort to produce a collection of high quality, carefully formatted, accessible, open source, and free public domain ebooks that meet or exceed the quality of commercially produced ebooks. The text and cover art in our ebooks is already believed to be in the public domain, and Standard Ebook dedicates its own work to the public domain, thus releasing whole ebooks files themselves into the public domain.
OASIS or Openly Available Sources Integrated Search is a search tool for open access materials developed at SUNY Geneseo's Milne Library. It currently searches content from 97 different sources and contains 385,629 records.
Mason OER Metafinder is a search tool to help find Open Educational Resources. Instead of searching a static database, Mason OER Metafinder performs a real-time, simultaneous search across 22 different OER resources resulting in up-to-th-minute results. Because of that, it may take a bit longer than other searches.
Mason OER Metafinder (MOM)Zero-Cost (to students) Textbook Alternatives: Our Library's guide with a wealth of information and links to freely available teaching and learning materials.
CUNY's Office of Library Services guide to CUNY Open Educational Resources (OER), Zero-Cost library resources, and other links to free resources during the COVID-19 pandemic. Find a search engine for finding Open Educational Resources, their listings to Openly Available Textbook resources and Publicly Available Research.
Vendor Love in the Time of COVID-19 - A Google Doc with a list of the offers from our various vendors
ICOLC COVID 19 Complimentary Expanded Access Specifics - A Google Doc with specifics on how to access various resources
VideoLib's Special Streaming Offers during Covid19 Cheat Sheet - compiled list of streaming videos offers
*American Museum of Natural History, New York
British Museum, London, England
Guggenheim, New York
Johannesburg Art Gallery, South Africa
Louvre, Paris, France
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York
Museum of the City of New York
National Archeological Museum, Athens, Greece
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
National Museum of African American History & Culture, Washington, DC
National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea
New York Historical Society Museum & Library
Prado Museum (Museo Nacional del Prado), Madrid, Spain
State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia
Uffiizi Galleries, Florence, Italy
*(from the Hunter College Library webpage)
Schaltegger, M. (2020, March 13). These iconic museums offer virtual tours perfect for when you're stuck at home. Thrillist. Retrieved from https://www.thrillist.com/news/nation/virtual-museum-tours