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Literary Research Guide

This LibGuide offers tips and suggestions on researching authors, novels, poetry, and other literary topics.

Finding E-Books

Through EBSCOhost, students have access to over 500,000 electronic books on a vast array of subjects. Novels, poetry collections, short story collections, plays, works of nonfiction -- every type of literature can be found here, ready to be clicked, read, and researched right here on your computer screen. When the book you need is not available in our libraries and interlibrary loan won't get it to you fast enough, ebooks are an easy solution and a great alternative to buying the book in stores.

You can access these ebooks in two ways. In both cases, you will be asked for your Piedmont University username and password if you are off-campus.

  • You can open the Online Library of the MAYFLOWER catalog and click on Find E-Books under Other Search Options.
  • You can go the Online Resources A-Z page that lists all ebook collections to choose an ebook collection to search.
  • In either case, you can then search for e-books by author, title, subject, or keywords.

How to Use eBooks Effectively

When an ebook opens, scan the table of contents or the index for topics of interest to you. You can then use the page number to navigate to the page you want and use Next and Previous to read forward and backward from that point.

You can also use the Search tab in the Netlibrary navigation frame to search for keywords in the book you are using. Using the links in the results, you'll be able to navigate to each instance of your words in the book.

Because of copyright restrictions, you can only print the ebooks one page at a time. However, we will supply you with our own print copy or borrow a copy from another library if you need to read extensively in a book. Click on the Interlibrary Loan link in the left-hand column for more information.

Because of copyright restrictions, you can only print the ebooks one page at a time. However, we will supply you with our own print copy or borrow a copy from another library if you need to read extensively in a book. Click on the Interlibrary Loan link in the left-hand column for more information.