It's true, you can access most COM Library resources at home! COM Library’s catalog, and the thousands of eBooks and articles in our databases can all be accessed off campus. Just login with your COM account for off campus access.
Library database provide you and your students with high quality content, including artifices, eBooks, journals, streaming video, primary documents and more. Find them on our A-Z Databases page. You can limit by subject and narrow down by content type.
One of the great things about providing links to library content is that you don't have to worry copyright and fair use issues. The provider has already done that for you.
Direct links to great academic resources are available for you to share with your students and embed in D2L. You'll find articles, eBooks, primary sources, reference, streaming media and more!
The great news is that all our online articles, streaming media and most other content available from our databases has 24/7 unlimited access! Meaning all your students can access them all at the same time, no limits, and you can feel free to provide links and assign to your classes. See top databases below or select see all in that category.
Our eBooks, on the other hand, come to us in a variety of ways based on publisher restrictions. Some publishers simply will not sell unlimited copies of eBooks; sometimes all we can get is 1-3 copies of an eBook; and some publishers won't sell to academic libraries.
In some cases it might be possible to purchase more copies depending on availability, demand and cost. Please let us know if there is a title you'd like to assign so we will see if we can get more copies. Library staff can help you with durable links for any articles, streaming media or eBooks. Just let us know.
Top sources for unlimited access eBooks are:
All Unlimited, All Owned eBooks
All of the eBooks from these platforms is unlimited. They are also owned by the library so access will never go away. The eBooks are web based and you can link to an eBook home page or directly to a specific chapter.
Mostly Unlimited eBooks, Some Owned eBooks
Most of the eBooks from this platforms are unlimited. While there are some titles with only 1-3 copies, this is our single largest eBooks collection with over 200,000 titles and you will find more unlimited eBooks here than anywhere else. The eBooks come in a web based format to which you can link to an eBook home page or directly to a specific chapter. These eBooks are also available to checkout and download to read on eBook apps.
Mostly 1 Copy, All Owned eBooks
These eBooks are owned by the library so access will never go away. Most of them are available as 1 copy, though in a few cases in EBSCO some may be 1-3 or unlimited.
Ebook Central
Ebook Central shows you on the home page of an eBook under the title and author how many copies are available. Most eBooks have unlimited copies.
EBSCO eBooks
EBSCO eBooks shows you on the home page of an eBook how many copies are available under Concurrent User Level. Most eBooks have single copies, though a few have 3 or unlimited.
For most databases, the URL you see in your browser address bar is a temporary link that will not provide access to the content for other users. What you need is a durable or persistent link. A durable link will provide on campus access. If you want to provide off campus as well, you'll need the proxy prefix. The proxy prefix is what allows all COM students, faculty and staff to access our databases of campus.
Some databases have gone the extra step and include the proxy prefix with the provided durable link. The chart below tells you which already have the proxy prefix. We have provided step by step instructions for all of our providers. You can access them from the above.
* You can still grab a durable link for all Gale content, but the proxy prefix is currently included at the main page and search results level. At this time it is generally not at the article, chapter or journal level. For those links that do not include the prefix you will need to add it. Details are provided in the step by step instructions.
For the providers with Not Required listed, anyone can get into the database to search or browse, but users have to check out items such as eBooks with COM credentials in order to see the content.
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