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e-Resources in Teaching: Home

A quick introduction to integrating e-textbooks into the USU curriculum.

Overview

The Learning Resource Center is able to license electronic versions of many journals and books, including textbooks. Using e-books has some significant differences from distributing physical books. This page will help you identify e-books (and other e-resources) available through the LRC, request the LRC license titles we do not already hold, and integrate them into your course content. 

In addition to e-books, you may use the methods described in this guide to integrate almost any licensed e-resources into your classes, including:

  • articles
  • databases
  • movies
  • images
  • calculators
  • and more

Advantages & Disadvantages of e-Books

Advantages Limitations
  1. Lightweight: convenient for travel (and distance learning)
  2. Vendors may automatically add a new edition to the collection when it is released (NB: the URL will often change). 
  3. Some vendors allow download of content.
  4. Many vendors offer bonus content (e.g. multimedia & Q-banks).
  5. Vendors often allow personal accounts that support bookmarking, highlighting, note-taking, etc. 
  6. E-texts are often more cost effective than purchasing a separate physical copy for each student.
  1. Loss of internet = loss of access (unless downloaded).
  2. Vendors may remove an outdated edition, when a new edition is released (causing pages and content to change).
  3. Some vendors limit concurrent usage.
  4. Vendors periodically remove titles from the collection.
  5. Personal accounts may be required to fully use provided features.
  6. Not every title can be licensed as an e-book.