Cardiff Met libraries hold over 140,000 print books across our two campus collections. Staff and students can borrow up to 30 books at a time and they renew automatically, unless reserved by someone else. You can find more information about borrowing books in our guide to Using our Libraries.
Cardiff Met provides access to a growing collection of 375,000 ebooks from a variety of publishers and platforms. You can search and access them using MetSearch or browse ebook collections on the Databases A-Z.
Ebook platforms offer a range of features when reading online, including options to add bookmarks, notes and highlights. They also include a range of accessibility features, such as the ability to change the background and font colours and change the text typeface and size. It is possible to download ebooks onto your device to read offline. You can download chapters and save as PDFs or download the entire book for a limited time using Adobe Digital Editions software.
Guidance on how to search, access and download books is available in our dedicated guide to Searching for Books and Ebooks.
The library subscribes to several ebook collections and databases, including:
BibliU - Full text eTextbooks BibliU user guide
Ebook Central - Our biggest ebook database. Includes full text ebooks from a range of publishers and access to the Academic Complete collection ProQuest user guide
EBSCO eBook Collection - Full text ebooks from EBSCO EBSCO user guide
Law Trove - A collection of law ebooks from Oxford University Press Law Trove user guide
O'Reilly - Ebooks in areas of computing, mathematics and engineering O'Reilly user guide
VLeBooks - Full text access to ebooks across all subject areas VLeBooks user guide
Ebooks are made available to purchase on various license options, including 1 user, 3 user, unlimited access, and non-linear licenses. A single user license means 1 person can view the book at any one time, 3-user means 3 people can view it at any one time and unlimited means any number of people can view the book at any one time. The non-linear license works on a credit system and allows multiple people to access the book until the credits run out.
If an ebook can't be accessed because the licence limits have been reached, check the MetSearch results page in case we have links to other providers. Even though you may not be able to access it straight away, some providers offer a reservation/queuing system which will notify you when the ebook is available.
The library tries to make as much content as possible available digitally, but this is not always possible as not all texts are available for us to purchase as ebooks. Some of the reasons for this include:
It is possible to download whole ebooks and chapters for offline access. Many ebooks offer a range of accessibility options, which can benefit all readers, regardless of whether you have a visual impairment or any special accessibility requirements. For more information, see our guides to downloading ebooks and their accessibility features:
Further guidance
For more help with searching for and using ebooks, contact your Academic Librarian.
The library also offers training throughout the year to help with all aspects of research and using the library's resources. You can sign up for these via MetHub.
