Ebook reading app is available for mobile devices.
Note that most but not all ebooks may be downloaded - this is decided by the individual book publishers.
Another library has created an excellent step-by-step guide to downloading EBSCO ebooks for offline reading. Their instructions also apply to UPEI users.
Most ebooks in EBSCO have an unlimited user license, but some have a more restrictive license, like just 1 user at a time.
Here is more information about Ebook permissions and timeouts, from EBSCO's "Connect" documentation (as of March 2026):
- Availability: Displays how many copies your institution has available to you.
- Chapter Download: Displays if the publisher has made chapter downloads available for printing, emailing, and saving for the title.
- Full eBook download: Displays the download availability set by your institution for the title.
- Copy & paste: Displays if the publisher has made copying and pasting of eBook content available.
This page explains how timeouts work, which matters when we have limited simultaneous users:
When eBooks are read online, they are "checked out" for a period of time that expires after 30 minutes of inactivity. While reading eBooks online, users can prevent the reading session from expiring by taking any action that updates the eBook (e.g. turning the page, etc.) When reading eBooks online:
- eBooks that are read online are considered "checked out" and may not be available to other members of your institution until your online reading session has ended, depending on the number of copies available to your users.
- If a user has been inactive in an eBook in the online reader for 29 minutes, they will be prompted to confirm if they are still reading, or if they are done. They will have an option to continue their reading session or exit the reader and return that copy for others' use.
- If a user's session expires, they will be prompted to see if they want to go back to reading the eBook if it is still available or if they are done.
- When reading multiple eBooks online, reading sessions expire in the order that they were opened.
For example: If you check out two books, the first at 1:00pm and the second at 1:02pm, each with a session expiration of 30 minutes, the reading sessions will expire at 1:30pm and 1:32pm, respectively.
And this page explains how a user can close an ebook to free up that license faster than the timeout above:
eBooks that are being viewed (checked-out) online can be “closed” and made available to other users, by the following methods:
- Closing the browser or browser tab in which you are reading the eBook
- Navigating away from the eBook viewer via:
- Clicking the Back link in the eBook Viewer
- Navigating elsewhere (i.e. away from EBSCO's interfaces)
The checkout will also expire after 30 minutes if the viewer is left open and no actions are taken.
Please note: Due to the way iPhones are coded, EBSCO's systems do now always know when the browser is closed on those devices. Because of this, those online checkouts will expire after 30 minutes.