Can the library offer more e-books for downloading?

It would be great if you could start offering books online. We could save the time it takes to find, borrow and return books. You could even charge a small fee for this option.

In some fields e-books are highly preferred, particularly if downloadable and with unlimited simultaneous access

We offer thousands of online books – just take a peek in our library catalogue or Discovery Search box on the homepage, our online books will turn up in your search results. You can also browse our e-books collection.

Unfortunately, not all of our suppliers will allow for downloading or multiple simultaneous user access. We do our best to acquire and negotiate for licenses that allow for the most freedoms with downloading and access, however due to copyright law and publisher's policies and liscensing, this is not always possible. No matter the downloading restrictions though, all of our e-books are definitely free for our students to access.

There aren’t enough copies of textbooks on reserve and sometimes not all readings are on reserve.

Textbooks on reserve are in high demand and there are not always enough copies available

We understand that textbooks are an expensive part of student life. Unfortunately, we cannot supply textbooks for every student all semester long. Instead, we provide at least one copy for short-term loan so that students can read or make copies as needed. We do hear your frustration though and we have acquired a few more copies for those courses with high class numbers. This service is thanks to the Library Services Fund – for students from students.

Online course reserves are not an automatic process. It is upon request from course instructors that the library provides online access to course readings such as articles. Log into the Course Reserves System to see what readings are online for your courses.

Please obtain recent academic books or lets us know how to obtain recent publications.

We try to keep our collection timely and comprehensive, but it is true that we cannot buy everything. No one library can afford this – and so as a network, we use our Interlibrary Loan system to allow students to borrow books from other libraries. It’s free!

If there is a book that you think should be in the library's collection, you can use our Suggest a Purchase form to request we buy it.

You can also check out the most recent additions to our collection on the New Book Display shelf at Vanier or online through one of our subject specific new book RSS feeds.

D’avantage de ressources en français aussi!

Oui le besoin est noté, notre population étudiante est de plus en plus bilingue et avoir des documents en plusieurs langues amène aussi des points de vues différents et enrichissants. Concordia demeure un établissement de langue d’enseignement anglophone et la majorité de nos ressources sont naturellement en anglais.

À Montréal on a le privilège d’avoir plusieurs universités à proximité du métro. Avec la carte d’emprunt BCI c’est possible d’avoir accès à leurs ressources aussi.

The Library should be promoting open access journals and publishers.

The Library has been involved in supporting open access through various initiatives including the Concordia Open Access Author Fund, our institutional open access repository, Spectrum and the Concordia University Press.