Comparative Literature: Books & eBooks

Access to thousands of the UCSB Library's purchased ebooks via ProQuest Ebook Central. Search across all full text content or within an individual book. With a free personal account, provides the ability to highlight, annotate, and save titles to a bookshelf. Includes books formerly available through ebrary.

UCSB has access to thousands of copyrighted titles from EBSCOhost's collection of reference, academic, general interest and professional electronic books, plus the EBSCOhost public domain collection.

Cambridge Core allows searching of articles from its electronic journals by journal title, author, author affiliation and/or keywords taken from the titles, abstracts and/or full-text. It also includes electronic books and reference materials that we have selectively purchased from Cambridge University Press.

To limit your search to just materials that are accessible to UCSB users, check the "Only search content I have access to" box below the search box.

HathiTrust is a digital repository of scanned books, journals, and other library materials. All users may access the bibiliographic information for materials in the database. In addition, full text is viewable for "Full View" (public domain and open access) materials. Those with a UCSBnet ID and password can download the full text of the Full View materials. HathiTrust is a partnership of major research institutions and libraries (including the UCSB Library) working to ensure that the cultural record is preserved and accessible long into the future.
Limited (search only) Materials
Full text is not available for materials which are under copyright protection or do not have the necessary permissions for open access. You can use the database to search for relevant materials and then use the Melvyl catalog to locate those items in the UCSB Library or another library. All users can access bibliographic information about materials included in the repository without logging in.
Full View (public domain and open access) Materials
Materials that are no longer protected by copyright or have the necessary permissions for open access are viewable to all users. Users with a UCSBnet ID and password may download the full text of Full View materials. There are two ways to log in to the repository:
Browsing Collections: Click on the "View Public Collections. Then, click on the "Login" link in the upper right-hand menu of the screen. Select "University of California, Santa Barbara" from the list of partners and click on the "Login" button. Enter your UCSBnet ID and password.
Searching: Perform a search and then browse through the results. When you click on a link for "Full View" you will be able to view the full text. To download the entire book, click on "Download PDF – whole book" and you will see the "Login" link in the pop-up box that comes up. Log in as described above.
Creating Collections
Logged-in users can also create personal "collections" for private or public use by selecting records from search results and then grouping them into a collection. These collections can be saved for subsequent use and may be shared with and accessed by others.

Access to the following collections are available through our membership in the Center for Research Libraries:
African Newspapers - more than 40 newspapers published between 1800 and 1922 in Sub-Saharan Africa
American Periodicals - North American special interest and general magazines, labor and trade publications, scientific and literary journals, and other historically significant titles of the mid-nineteenth to early twentieth centuries, prioritized for preservation.
Brazilian Government Documents - Executive branch serial documents issued by Brazil’s national government between 1821 and 1993, and by its provincial governments from the earliest available to the end of the first Republic in 1930.
Chinese Pamphlets: Political Communication & Mass Education - Pamphlets, picture books, and other propaganda issued during the early years of the People’s Republic between 1947 and 1954. This is the “street literature” of the revolution: comic books, leaflets, and other ephemera distributed to the general population of provincial cities and villages.
Digital Library for International Reserach (DLIR) - CRL has partnered with the Council of American Overseas Research Centers (CAORC) to develop the Digital Library for International Research. DLIR aims to provide bibliographic and full-text access to print collections and other media held at CAORC-sponsored overseas research centers and allied partners.
Dziennik Zwiazkowy - The first ten years (1908–17) of Dziennik Zwiazkowy, founded in Chicago in 1908 by the Polish National Alliance. Representing local, national, and international issues of concern to the Polish community, the paper continues today as the Polish Daily News.
Pamphlets and Periodicals of the French Revolution of 1848 - Pamphlets and periodicals from the French Revolution of 1848 held by the Center for Research Libraries.
Slavery and Manumission Manuscripts of Timbuktu - Arabic nineteenth-century manuscripts relating to slavery and manumission in Timbuktu provide documentation on Africans in slavery in Muslim societies. From the Bibliothèque Commémorative Mama Haidara in Timbuktu, Mali.