Ebooks for all occasions at SLQ

Did you know that you can you borrow ebooks from the State Library of Queensland and read them on your mobile device? At SLQ we have a number of ebooks for all your study, research, and leisure needs. If you’re in our catalogue – One Search – you can just search for ebooks using the drop down menu item type in the picture you see below.

There are a couple of ways to find out which ebooks we’ve got in the collection. You can start by searching for your favourite title or author before limiting the search to ebooks in the drop down menu or you can browse subject. See the images below to help you with this.

I’ve used the example of biographies but you could also search using the subject ‘fiction’ or even by a general subject you’re studying like sociology, feminism or medicine.

A significant portion of the ebooks you see in the catalogue are provided by Proquest Ebook Central.

If you are on your mobile device, search in our catalogue for the ebook (or ebooks) you are interested in. Once you have found a book you are looking for in One Search you can follow the link under the ‘online’ tab and select the option to have the full download. The pop-up box will ask what sort of device you are using and then will ask you to download Bluefire Reader which you can from the App Store or Google play. The final step is to download. Sometimes there is an option of how long you would like to borrow the item and if so this is where you would choose that, otherwise press download and the item should appear in your new Bluefire app straight away.

Another provider of ebooks, Project Gutenberg, is an organisation who have digitised out of copyright books and you can find some of these through our catalogue and download them to Bluefire. You will be taken from One Search to Project Guttenberg and here you can choose whether you want to read on the Bluefire reader app, the iBooks app or the Kindle app. Select your preference and get reading.

Ebooks are wonderfully accessible things. You can have the idea of what book you want to be reading and within minutes be reading it so if you’re impatient and disorganised like me then this is a real gift.

Ebooks can take the stress out of finding resources and text books when you’re studying too. We have thousands of academic works you can access remotely; even the IELTS practice books.

Don't worry if you're a skeptic and don't trust all this new technology - you can still borrow paper books too! ebooks are here to stay though so why not give them a try? You might be pleasantly surprised.

Leela Wittmer

Librarian, Information Services