The Library gets ebooks from many different sources and the ability to download entire books varies greatly across those sources. Some allow a full book or chapter download that can be used on any device and some have limitations.
EBSCO and ProQuest books have the most restrictions and the page on this guide on downloading ebooks has more information.
The Library’s ebook collections support teaching and research at the University, so very few popular titles will be available.
We recommend visiting the Chicago Public Library, which has a large collection of popular ebooks.
If you are outside of Chicago, check your local public library. Most offer ebooks as well as audio books.
Ebooks in our collections are not optimized for ereaders. We recommend saving pages as PDFs and moving those to your device.
Adobe Digital Editions is available as an app for Android, iOS and Kindle Fire. You can use this to read EBSCO and ProQuest ebooks that require it, as well as PDF and EPUB formatted books.
Many of our ebooks on the EBSCO and ProQuest platforms are limited to one user at a time. This will be noted on the details screen when you open an ebook. This limitation is put in place by publishers.
The limits on pages you can save are tied to your browser. You can save more pages of a book if you shut your browser completely and return to the book you were viewing.