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E-Textbooks Overview
E-Textbooks are a great way to access your course textbook without having to worry about losing it, hauling it around, or marking in the book. With e-textbooks, students and instructors can bookmark their spot, print off chapters/images/etc., and gain access to tons of study resources. Additionally, students have the option to opt-out of using e-textbooks as well. See the video below for a brief overview of using e-textbooks:
Accessing Your E-Textbook
If you are teaching or taking a course that is using e-textbooks, this article will show how to access those materials in BlueQuill.
- Navigate to your course's home page within BlueQuill.
- From the course page, if your course uses an e-textbook, then you will see an object with your course's textbook name and/or the author on it, like so:
- Your course e-textbook will most likely be found in the "Syllabus" section of the course. If the course designer didn't add any content to the learning object, the e-textbook will open in a new tab automatically when opening the object.
- Your course e-textbook will most likely be found in the "Syllabus" section of the course. If the course designer didn't add any content to the learning object, the e-textbook will open in a new tab automatically when opening the object.
- After clicking on the course's e-textbook object, you will see the object's page. From this page, click the "Open" button to open up your e-textbook in another tab.
- If it is your first time opening your textbook, then you will see the welcome page in Vital Source. If you are using Courseware (or another textbook vendor) the process is very similar.
- From the welcome page, you have the option to add your email address:
- Highly recommended - Adding your email address allows you to read your book from different devices, share notes/highlights with others, and access the textbook for 3 years.
- After this step, you will now have full access to your course's e-textbook.
Vital Source offers a number of tutorials and videos on how to navigate, highlight, and make notes to your e-textbook here: https://support.vitalsource.com/hc/en-us
For videos on how to navigate your e-textbook, go here: http://downloads.vitalbook.com/tutorials/publish/index.html?did=generic#video/online_3_navigating_library
Opting Out of e-Textbooks
If you are not wanting to use an e-textbook for your course, then you have the option to opt-out of purchasing your book this way. For more information on how to do this, visit our article Opting Out of E-Textbooks.