Ask a Librarian
E-book Tips
Additional e-book options during COVID-19 closures
HathiTrust Digital Library now offers members Emergency Temporary Access Service for digitized versions of many of the books we own in print; just log in using your Amherst username and password.
HathiTrust Digital Library now offers members Emergency Temporary Access Service for digitized versions of many of the books we own in print; just log in using your Amherst username and password.
We have multiple e-book collections, listed below. E-books will also appear in your search results. Look for Amherst College: Link to resource or Five Colleges: Link to resource.
To limit to e-books only in Discover, search for your keywords and then use the Format filter in your search results page.
Use the Library Location filter to select "Amherst College Online" to filter results to ebooks you can access from Amherst.
Having trouble with access?
If an e-book is only owned by another Five College library (ex: UMass), you won't be able to use it online.
Check out our e-book Troubleshooting & downloading guide for issues with viewing or downloading e-books.
Google books can also be helpful, even if the book you're looking for isn't fully online. You can search for a title or a keyword, and be able to see snippets or preview pages. You might also be able to see tables of content or the index of a book to get other clues for your topic.
You can request a purchase for an e-book that we don't own, though not all will be available in that format.
Can't find a book you need?
If you're having trouble finding a book you need, contact us!
E-book Collections
- JSTOR e-BooksMore than 75,000 e-books from renowned scholarly publishers.
- Ebook Central (ProQuest) This link opens in a new windowMultidisciplinary e-book collection from leading university presses and academic publishers. Alumni access
- Springer eBook/e-Journal Collection This link opens in a new windowMultidisciplinary collection of Springer e-books (2005-) and e-journals. Alumni access
- Project Muse This link opens in a new windowOnline database of more than 200 journals from nonprofit publishers. Alumni access
- Cambridge Companions This link opens in a new windowScholarly surveys of authors, literary history, culture, and philosophy.
- Cambridge Histories This link opens in a new windowProvides political, economic and social history, philosophy, and literature of selected countries and subjects.
- Oxford Reference This link opens in a new windowDigitized entries from Oxford's Dictionaries, Companions and Encyclopedias, spanning multiple subject areas.
- Gale Virtual Reference Library This link opens in a new window70 reference e-books, including multivolume works like the Encyclopedia of Religion, American Decades, and more.
- ACLS Humanities E-Book This link opens in a new windowOver 1,700 scholarly books, searchable fulltext.
- African Writers Series (ProQuest One Literature) This link opens in a new windowComplete texts of the Heinemann's African Writers Series.
- Project Gutenberg This link opens in a new windowFull-text collection of over 35,000 public domain books.
- Hathi Trust Digital Library This link opens in a new windowPreservation repository of full-text books & journals that allows comprehensive searching, downloading of public-domain books, and specialized services for text-mining projects. Choose Amherst College from the list of institutions to log in and get access to additional features and tools.
Historical Digitized Book Collections
- Amherst College Digital CollectionsDigitized manuscripts, books, art works, photographs, and other media from Amherst College Archives & Special Collections.
- Chinese Philosophical EText ArchiveHosted by Wesleyan University, this online collection includes electronic versions of Chinese philosophical texts created by the Confucian Etext Project; electronic versions of Chinese philosophical texts from other sources; and information on and links to more information on the preparation and use of these texts.
- Chinese Text ProjectFocusing on pre-modern texts, open source digital library with over 20,000 titles
- Early American Imprints, Series I, Evans (1639-1800) This link opens in a new windowBooks, pamphlets, broadsides and other imprints listed in the renowned bibliography by Charles Evans.
- Early American Imprints. Series II, Shaw-Shoemaker (1801-1819) This link opens in a new windowBooks, pamphlets, broadsides and other imprints listed in the distinguished bibliography by Ralph R. Shaw and Richard H. Shoemaker.
- EEBO: Early English Books Online (1473-1700) This link opens in a new windowFull text of over 125,000 titles listed in Pollard & Redgrave's Short-Title Catalogue (1475-1640), Wing's Short-Title Catalogue (1641-1700), and the Thomason Tracts (1640-1661).
- Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) (1701-1800) This link opens in a new windowPage images and full-text searching for more than 136,000 key English- and foreign-language titles printed in Great Britain during the 18th century, based on the English Short Title Catalogue.
- Nineteenth Century Collections Online (NCCO) (1780-1925) This link opens in a new windowFull-text, searchable content from a broad range of 19th-century sources in literature, politics, theater, music, religion, maps, science, and childhood
- Primeros Libros de las AméricasDigitized copies of first books printed in Mexico before 1601. These monographs represent the first printing in the New World.
- Princeton Islamic Manuscripts CollectionIslamic manuscripts, chiefly bound paper codices, located in the Manuscripts Division of the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, at the Harvey S. Firestone Memorial Library at Princeton.