Selective list of music e-books collections

Increasingly the Music Library purchases English-language books about music in electronic (e-book) format only. Some titles take time to appear in the Library’s catalogues, McGill WorldCat catalogue and the Classic Catalogue. For access to the latest acquisitions you may have to check the following sites directly. A longer list of the McGill Library e-book subscriptions (including music technology-related sources) as well as free e-book sites may be consulted at http://www.mcgill.ca/library/find/ebooks.

Current collections

• UPSO: University Press Scholarship Online
  e-book distributor of several university presses (see complete list) including Oxford University Press, University of California Press, and University of Chicago Press. Books are downloadable by the chapter in pdf format and linkable via a stable URL. Browse the music titles.
• Project Muse (UPCC: University Press Content Consortium)
  Known for its scholarly ejournal content, Project Muse now provides access to e-books from nearly 100 scholarly presses (see complete list) with no digital rights management (DRM). Books are downloadable by the chapter in pdf format and linkable via a stable URL. Browse the music titles.
• Cambridge Books Online
  More than 20,000 scholarly books from University of Cambridge Press. Books are downloadable by the chapter in pdf format and linkable via a stable URL. Browse the music titles.
• University of California Press Scholarship Editions
  Nearly 400 of over 1400 online titles are freely available to the general public. University of California Press also makes its e-books available via other McGill subscriptions linked on this page. Browse the open access music titles.

McGill’s 3 principal e-book providers are listed below. Their e-book content comes from a wide variety of publishers, not just scholarly presses. While it is possible to read e-books online without signing in, all 3 place time or page limits on “browsing” and encourage readers to create an account. Once signed in, readers may “borrow” an e-book after downloading the free software Adobe Digital Editions (ADE). ADE allows access to borrowed e-books from many synched personal devices. Due to digital rights management (DRM) restrictions, each provider imposes limits to copying and printing.

• EBL: Ebook Library
• Ebrary
• EBSCOhost eBook Collection

Historical collections

• HathiTrust
  A digital preservation repository that provides access to content in the public domain and copyrighted content from a variety of sources, including partner institutions such as McGill. McGill users can access over 3 million public domain volumes. To see full-text content, login with your McGill username and password after selecting an item.
• Google Books
  A vast repository of digitized texts provided by "library partners" worldwide as well as participating publishers. Full text is available for materials in the public domain. Access to items under copyright varies from full text to "no preview" depending on agreements with the copyright holders.
• Internet Archive: Text Archive
  Public domain materials including archives and published texts from university collections around the world: “free to read, download, print, and enjoy.”
• EEBO: Early English Books Online
  Books (all languages) published in England and books in English printed in Scotland, Ireland, Wales and British North America 1475-1700.
• ECCO: Eighteenth Century Collections Online
  Significant English and foreign-language books, pamphlets, broadsides, ephemera printed in UK, and "important works" from the Americas, 1701-1800.]