This question comes up frequently and doesn’t have a clear “yes” or “no” answer. Every month Bookshare adds more of the books our Members want! We process hundreds of textbooks based on student requests and add lots of postsecondary titles from university partners. We added over 16,000 new books to our collection from April to June this year, including New York Times bestsellers as well as hundreds of new textbooks. Please consider some facts.
Bookshare now has over 125,000 books; teachers and professors regularly assign many of these books as required reading. Over 6000 are classified as textbooks.
Publishers have contributed digital files for more than 58,000 books. Twenty-two university presses – publishers of scholarly and academic content – have agreed to contribute digital files to Bookshare.
Knowing that there are lots of books, let’s explore a few topics in the library. For example, how many books does Bookshare have about Algebra, American literature, or Earth Science? Here’s what you’ll find:
- Books have algebra in the title: 192
- Books with American Literature in the title: 96
- Books with Earth Science in the title: 119
Anyone Can Search Any Topic
Anyone, with or without a Bookshare membership, can look up a topic and find the number of titles on that topic. You simply go to Advanced Search, a link in the middle of the task bar on every screen, and enter your topic in either the title field or the subject field. Using the subject field will return many more results because the count will show every book containing your search terms.
Some textbooks for a variety of interests added recently include:
Modern Masonry: Brick, Block, Stone
Kiss My Math: Showing Pre-Algebra Who’s Boss
The ten-year anniversary of 9/11 reminded all of us of its horrors and heroism. Recently, Harper Collins contributed a book that may interest students everywhere called “With Their Eyes: September 11th – The View from a High School at Ground Zero.” Stuyvesant High School was a few blocks away from the World Trade Center, so these are the stories of the kids who were there.
You may just find one to give to a student, or as a member read yourself, for fun. With so many books and so much variety, perhaps one book will make the difference and let reading come alive.
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