Tips for Reading Books Online
Many people find reading books online, especially textbooks, to be difficult. And while there are some disadvantages to reading online (you have to be in front of your computer and screen reading tends to be more tiring then reading off a printed page) there are also advantages. By taking advantage of the unique features that online books and journals offer, and by minimizing the negatives, you may find that you come to actually prefer online reading.
eBrary eBooks
The Empire State College online library offers a number of resources of interest and use to adult learners. But for math and science nothing beats the the eBrary eBook collection. The eBrary collection contains over 25,000 recent titles, mostly on topics from math, science, and technology.
For example, a search for the phrase "computational biology" returns dozens of books with titles like: Computational Biology and Genome Informatics (2003), Practical Bioinformatician (2004), and Mathematics and 21st Century Biology (2005). And you would get similar results from almost and topic from math or science.
So the eBrary eBooks collection contains books you can make use of, but how do you make reading books online a more effective and enjoyable experience. Here are some tips.
1) When you go to the eBrary collection for the first time you will be prompted to login. You must use your Empire State College login (and password). This is not the same as the SLN password that you use to access a course. Using the wrong login and password (and not getting in) is a common problem. If you don't remember your Empire State College login (or if you've never established one) you'll find help here.
2) The first time you open an eBrary book you must install the eBrary reader. The installation of the browser add-in you need to access the eBrary collection is painless. If you don't have it you'll be prompted to do it and you can just follow the directions. But you must complete this step before you can access eBrary books collection. Note: You must set your browser to allow the eBrary site to open popups. How you do this will depend on the browser and any popup blocker that you might use.
3) Once you've installed the reader, and you have found and opened the book you want, take a moment to become acquainted with the eBrary Reader interface. Using the eBrary Reader effectively will dramatically improve you online reading experience.
The left frame contains the eBrary search pane. This area includes the search box and your bookshelf. You don't need to see this area while you are reading a book so if your screen real estate is limited drag the border of the frame to the left and make it smaller.
The rest of the browser window displays the book you are reading. Within this area a frame on the left displays the table of contents for the book. You can click in the table of contents to navigate within the book. This area also provides access to your notes and bookmarks for that book. It is helpful to keep this area visible because it makes it easier to navigate through the book while you are reading.
Perhaps the best tip we can give you is the method we use to move from page to page within the eBrary reader. It's natural when you first start reading online to use the mouse to navigate from page to page. There are buttons at the top of the window you can click to go forward or back. But clicking each time you want the next page is annoying (not to mention hard on the wrists), and you have to wait for each page to be downloaded from the server. This delay is a major drawback of reading a book online.
But there's a solution. A much better navigation approach is to use the arrow keys on your keyboard. Use the down arrow to scroll down as you read the page and you use the right arrow to go to the next page when you are ready for it. As mentioned, one major complaint with reading online is the delay you experience when you are ready to move to the next page. Each time you request a new page it has to come from the server and that delay can disrupt your reading. You can overcome this problem by pressing the right arrow key when you still have a few sentences left to read on the current page.
That may sound tricky, but in reality it works quite well. With a little practice it becomes second nature and you can get the timing right without thinking about it. Just liking flipping the page of a book.
Bookmarks and Notes
One of the advantages of reading books online is the ability to store bookmarks and notes. This makes keeping track of references you will need later on easy and reliable.
You can save the book you read on your bookshelf (put as many books on the bookshelf as you want), and once a book is on the bookshelf you can store as many bookmarks and notes as you want. You can even type notes that appear with each bookmark so that you remember what the reference was to.
The only catch is that before you can do this you must establish an eBrary bookshelf. There's no cost for this but you have to create an account by providing a user ID and password.
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