Once borrowed, a printed book is no longer available to other would-be borrowers until the copy is returned. With an e-book, all bonafide students and their professors can "borrow" it simultaneously albeit for a fixed period of time. At DLSU such students must also have a library account.
[Read more on this idea in Nicholas Negroponte's being digital (Vintage, 1996).]
What e-titles do we have?
So far, the DLSU library has titles from e-brary Gale, Science Direct, Springer. These databases include non-books, i.e. articles in magazines, Web sites, and research journals, as well as real books.
For WRITING A52 and A54, I found Tate & Taylor's Scholastic Journalism (Wiley-Blackwell, 2013).You may read it online, or download in parts or in whole. The words "Your institution has unlimited access to this book" are most soothing.
A note on full download. It means you can keep the file on your computer for 14 days. The download expires after two weeks because of a copyright-protection technology called DRM (digital rights management). The PDF is in your computer but the DRM prevents you from displaying it. Any amateur geek will know how to disarm a DRM. But look at our ELGA No.4.
On the other hand, chapter downloads become yours forever. Then again, you can divide the work of which chapters to download and you will have the whole book anyway. Again, ELGA No. 4.
Downloading an e-book legally and ethically
- Login. When you choose to download, the system will ask you to sign in. Do so as follows:
Email/Username name.surname@dlsu.edu.ph
Password [use your library password, not MLS] - Select device you are using. Click continue, Install (Adobe Digital Editions, or if you already have this), Download the book. If you choose to install Adobe Digital Editions, you will also be asked to install the Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Installer
- What you will get is an acsm file. This not the book. The book will download as a PDF, a protected PDF. Adobe Digital Editions will use the acsm file to link you to the protected PDF.
When your book expires
You can borrow again, of course.
