ACCESSING E-BOOOKS on ATHENS Need more info? Visit the LRC or contact us on: or Ext 5360

LOGGING IN TO ‘ATHENS’ You access ebooks through a website called ‘Athens’ Type My Athens login into a search engine then click on the link entitled ‘MyAthens: Login’ (usually the first search result) Type in your username and password: your username is your student number preceded by ‘ayr’ i.e. ayrA Your password is ‘Password1’ (the ‘P’ is capitalised). Passwords can be individualised by changing them in the ‘My Account’ tab on the Athens homepage. (The first time you login you will have to select the tick box to accept terms) Password1

What is Athens, Dawson Books and Ebrary? Once you have logged in to Athens you will be taken to the Athens homepage. DawsonEra and Ebrary are the two sites which host our eBook collections. You can find links to Dawson and Ebrary in the ‘All Resources’ box in the middle of the Homepage. Click on these to access Dawson or ebrary. DawsonEra is the site where we purchase and host eBooks specifically bought for Ayrshire College. ebrary is the site which allows free access to around 400+ additional eBooks. All our resources are mobile- friendly. You can access them from your phone or tablet.

Finding Books in Dawson (This first time you use Dawson, click to ‘Accept’ the Terms & Conditions at the bottom of the page) If you know exactly what book you are looking for, enter the title or author into the search box and click ‘Search’. If you would like to do a more general search enter a keyword or term into the search box, and click on ‘Search’. Click on ‘Advanced Search’ for more options to limit your search and find more specific results.

Click on the star icon to save any useful books to your ‘Bookshelf’ so they are easy to find next time you need them. Browsing eBooks A purple padlock symbol before the book titles indicates this book has not been purchased yet. You can ‘Preview’ it for 5 minutes. If you would like full access to it you can ‘Suggest to Buy’. Please check back soon, the book could be made available for you. A green padlock symbol indicates that you can read a book in full, immediately. Click on the book icon to read online. (You must have an internet connection to access and read books through Dawson)

Navigating through an eBook You have a Table of Contents. Click on the chapter title to go to that chapter. Scroll up & down to move through the book a page at a time. Type in a page number to go to that page. Click on the ‘Search’ tab and enter a keyword or phrase in the box to search the whole book for that word. A list of pages it appears on will be brought up on the left-hand side of the screen. Click on each result to go to that page.

Functions You can add a note to a page by clicking on the ‘Notes’ tab. Copy & Paste or Print by clicking on the ‘Actions’ button on the taskbar… And then either ‘Copy’ or ‘Print’… Notes Accessibility Click the magnifier icons to make the text larger or smaller. Copy & Print (For copyright, you can Copy or Print up to one chapter, or 5% of the book. How many pages this equates to is indicated) Text-to-speech software is available if you would prefer to listen to an eBook. This is available on most devices or is free to download. Ask in the LRC for more details.

Finding eBooks in ebrary Type a title, author’s name or keyword into the box and click ‘Search’ Click on ‘Advanced’ or ‘All Subjects’ for options to narrow your search results. In your search results, click on the title of a book for more info and to read. All books on ebrary are available to read in full, straight away.

Navigation in an ebrary eBook This works in much the same way as navigation in Dawson: Use the arrows or scroll up & down to move through a page at a time. Search for a word or term by clicking on the magnifier symbol and entering a search term in the search box. Click on a chapter titles in the Table of Contents to go to that chapter. Click to save a useful book so it is easy to access again. Click on the ‘Bookshelf’ tab to view your saved titles.

Functions Increase/decrease text size with the magnifier icons. Save a page by clicking the ‘Bookmark’ icon. You can add a note and access it later by clicking on the star icon on the left-hand side of the page. Highlight important sections. Click on the ‘Cite’ icon to generate a correctly formatted reference (remember to select ‘Harvard’!) You can download your current chapter to read offline. This will create a PDF that you can save on your device. This file will be removed from your device after 14 days, but you can download it again. You can copy sections by clicking the ‘Copy’ icon or by highlighting the section of text you want. Paste into your essay to quote directly (remember to reference this!) To print click on the icon. For copyright, there are limits on how much you can copy and print. A pop-up box will let you know how many more pages you have left.