Three copies

Continuing the discussion....

A search in our catalog shows we have three electronic copies of the Readers Companion to Military History.

The catalog MARC records reveal a few differences in the e-books:
-- NetLibrary (now Ebsco) notes "This is a paperbound reprint of a 1996 work" and "This NetLibrary eBook does not include some or all of the images that were part of the original hardcopy book".
-- Ebrary notes it is a 2001 edition.
-- Credo notes it is the 1996 edition with little more information. You may remember from my last blog entry that in Credo itself, the description of the title is quite extensive.

All three MARC records include a hyperlink to access the book. What I found intriguing is the differences in finding the same information within the books.

I started in Credo. The link from the catalog took me directly to the book with the search box open at the top of the screen. A search for marines pulled up 12 articles. The first article was by Allan R. Millett and talked about marines in various countries. It is not specifically about the United States Marines. I decided to use that article as my base for looking in the other two e-books.

To open the Ebsco copy requires clicking on the left side - open ebook full text. To search with in the text you click on the search tool on the right side. A search box opens at the top of the screen. The search for marines pulled up 42 keyword references. I started scrolling through the results to see if I could find the article by Allan R. Millett. Because the search is going through the 'book' you are given page numbers as reference points. I didn't find the section on my first go round. I did a search by Millett. I went back to the Credo article to see what other phrases might help me find the exact article. Finally I found it but it wasn't fast or easy.

The e-brary version of the Readers Companion opened in the book. I admit I'm not as familiar with ebrary as perhaps I should be. After I describe my experience with this search, you may understand my reluctance to use the resource. Here we go. There is a search box at the top of the book. However, upon close inspection that search box looks through all of ebrary's titles. The search box for the specific title we're in, is on the right side, in a column. I entered the word marines. There is an arrow at the top of the screen to go to the next highlighted entry. Is there no list of all the hits? After much looking around, I realized the right side of the screen has a drop down arrow by the word entries. A magnifying glass by the letters is the clue that there is a highlighted word there. This is a reference book and the articles are in alphabetical order. I clicked on M and voila there was the article I was looking for. There is no citation. I couldn't find a durable URL to get to the title in ebrary.

I feel like Goldilocks. Hands down, Credo was the easiest to use but it looks least like the book. Ebrary and Ebsco had different good and bad qualities. Both looked like the print version, if that really matters. I just want to find the information.

And now you know that, although the titles are the same, the search strategies would be different for each e-book.



-kss

Check with your campus librarian for the login to each e-book collection.