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How to Use Ebook Central

How to access and use the eBooks in COM Library's Ebook Central collection.

AI Features in Ebook Central

The Ebook Central Research Assistant is an academic AI tool designed to enhance student learning and streamline research. It can help researchers quickly assess the relevance of books and chapters, enabling them to review, analyze, and explore ideas with ease.

Research Assistant strengthens research and critical thinking skills, and boosts confidence throughout the research process. Unlike general AI tools, the Research Assistant generates insights exclusively from within the book chapter, ensuring accuracy and reliability.

Ebook Central has enabled AI Research Assistant on all eligible books, but some publishers have chosen to opt out. 

Good to to Know

The Research Assistant can be found on the left side of the screen for PDFs, or on the right side of the screen for EPUBs which used in our examples on this page. 

Book Summary Feature

When you fist open an eBook to read, Research assistant will automatically generate a description of the book. 

If you scroll past the description, you an also see subject terms that you could select to find more books on the same subject. 

Key Takeaways from the Chapter

Key takeaways are generated from each chapter within the book and are intended to help a user understand what the chapter is about in a succinct, easy-to-understand way to help quickly determine its relevance for the user’s specific research. 

You can generate key takeaways any time you see the Show key takeaway button. You can generate key takeaways any time you see the Show key takeaways button. One generated, the key takeaways appear above in the Research Assistant window. 

Key Takeaways from Chapter View

Concepts from the Chapter

Research Assistant Concepts are important ideas with explanations drawn from the chapter itself. Here are a few things that are good to know: 

  • The definition for each term is not derived from external sources but is generated using the text of the chapter with the goal of explaining the concept in the context of the chapter.
  • Each concept is hyperlinked so that users can run a search on any individual term by clicking on it.

You can generate concepts any time you see the Show concepts button. One generated, the concepts appear above in the Research Assistant window. 

Concepts from Chapter View