Answers

Getting started with eBook Central

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eBook Central provides instant access to thousands of trusted academic eBooks across every subject area. With easy-to-use tools like advanced search, highlighting, and note-taking, you can organise your reading and keep track of important information effortlessly. Designed for efficiency and accessibility, eBook Central helps you stay focused on your work while ensuring you have authoritative sources at your fingertips, whenever you need them.

Note: You can find all these resources directly through the main library search portal.

How do I search eBook Central?

Start by entering your main topics into the search bar.  Since this is a dedicated database, your results will consist exclusively of high-quality academic books

• Use Keywords: Keep it simple (e.g. Change Management, anxiety or depression) 
   
• Search for Phrases: Use quotation marks for exact phrases (e.g., "effective management planning")  to get more relevant results..​​

Refining your results

On the left-hand side of the results page, you’ll see the Filters panel. This is your toolkit for narrowing down your search and finding exactly what you need. There are plenty of options to explore, but here are two of the most useful to start with:

• Subject: this is a good way of narrowing down the results to a specific topic.
• Publication Date: Set a custom date range to find the most recent research or target a particular time period.​​​​​

Saving and exporting your results

Once you've selected the results you want to save, you have a few different options: Click on the following links to view the guide for each option.

• My Research Account: Create a free My Research account to permanently save documents, searches, and alerts. All saved items will appear in the My Documents section for easy access. 
• Add to bookshelf use the add to Bookshelf feature to organize and quickly retrieve your favourite titles within eBook Central
• Download ebook or Chapter: For offline reading, click Download Book to save the entire eBook or Download PDF to download individual chapters.
• Permanent Links: Select Share Link to Book to generate a stable link for future reference or sharing with others.

Try Advanced Search for more control

If your basic search returns too many (or too few) results, switch to Advanced Search. You can find this by clicking the three horizontal lines (menu icon) on the left side of the page.

In this mode, you can use "Boolean Operators" to tell the database exactly how to combine your search terms:

• AND (Narrow your search): Use this to link different ideas. The database will only find articles that contain both terms (e.g., Anxiety AND Social Media).
• OR (Broaden your search): Use this to search for synonyms or related concepts. This is perfect if you aren’t sure which word an author might use. The database will find articles containing either term (e.g., Cats OR Felines).
• NOT (Exclude results): Use this to filter out irrelevant topics. The database will ignore any articles containing the second term (e.g., Depression NOT Postpartum).
• Specific Fields: Use the dropdown menus next to the search boxes to search specifically for an Author, Document Title, or Subject Heading for much more precise results.
• Limiters: filter for publication date,  only before you even hit search.

Want to explore more?

You can find several specialised search tools positioned above the main query box on the Basic Search page:

• Publications: Access a specific publication's homepage to search or browse its archives.
• Browse: Discover research by exploring predefined topics and curated content.
• Change Databases: Select or modify which database you are currently searching

To find these options on the Advanced Search page, click on the menu.

Check out the ProQuest help centre for guides, videos, tutorials  and more on:

• Basic Searching – Start your research with confidence
• Search Strategy Tips – Find exactly what you need, faster
• Viewing and Saving Articles – Keep your best finds handy
• ProQuest Basic Search Tutorial – Perfect for beginners
• ProQuest Advanced Search Tutorial – Take your searching to the next level

Need more help 

If you would like more help, email us at Library@arden.ac.uk or book a librarian appointment 

Related FAQs

• How do I save results in the APA databases