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E-Resource of the Month – Dawsonera

dawsonera-logo-450x215What is Dawsonera?

Dawsonera is the largest supplier of electronic books to academic libraries. It is part of the same company that provides our print books – Dawson Books. Dawson works with the world’s leading publishers to ensure that Dawsonera provides the richest and most diverse collections of electronic books available. Over 300,000 books are available for purchase or rental. Dawsonera ebooks are designed to be made available to users however they want it – whether it’s a quick preview, reading it in your browser, or downloading it if you plan to refer to it often. Books our library doesn’t own can be rented, and it’s often much easier than trying to locate an inter-library loan copy. Ebooks are also a great way of ensuring books can be spread around – no need to wait for print copies to be returned! Dawsonera ebooks are also available on numerous devices. Dawsonera has upgraded recently, so this is an overview of what’s changed and what’s remained intact.

How do I access Dawsonera?

Dawsonera can be accessed directly at its website or it can be accessed via our e-resources pages. Click on ‘D’ and find Dawsonera ebooks. Click on ‘sign in’ in the top right corner, and choose Shibboleth login. Choose ‘Goldsmiths’ from the list of subscribing universities, and then enter your campus username and password, e.g. jsmit010. This form of login applies whether you’re accessing it on campus or off. All Dawsonera ebooks we own are also available via the library catalogue. On the results page, click on ‘electronic book [click here to access]’ and follow the link in the record to take you to Dawsonera.

Searching Dawsonera

Once signed in, you’ll be directed to the Dawsonera homepage. You’ll be shown the most read books by Goldsmiths and also ‘recently added’ (added to Dawsonera itself, not Goldsmiths’ collections). In the right column, you’ll see your own Dawsonera activity, including books you’ve saved to your bookshelf and your recently viewed books. These are handy if you plan to return to books you’re reading. You can browse by clicking ‘ebook catalogue’. If you ensure that ‘show unowned content’ is unticked, you’ll only see the books Goldsmiths owns. You can change the year of publication (you might wish to see 2014 books only) and you can choose specific categories (e.g. subjects) to browse within.

The search bar at the top of the page allows you to search by author, title, keyword, etc. If you use this search, be as thorough as possible, including title and author if you know it. The advanced search allows you to be even more specific, including searching by ISBN if you know it.

When you find a book we own, you’ll see two icons – the first allows you to download for 1-3 days. It will be saved as a PDF in your documents folder, titled by its ISBN. The PDF will no longer be available once the time you requested it for lapses. The read online option allows you to open the book there and then in your browser. Mac users should always download ebooks and open the ebooks with Adobe Reader, not Preview (which is a Mac’s default PDF reader).

If you find a book we don’t own, you’ll see three icons – the first allows you a 5 minute preview to check its contents. The second allows you to request a rental (which in most cases is accepted), whilst the third allows you to suggest that the library purchases the book.

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