What do you think of Elsevier ebooks / PageBurst?

Nursing Students General Students

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Greeting fellow students!

I have a Surface Pro 4 and love it. I've been trying my best to go all digital as it saves a lot of space and keeps me organized. I love marking up PowerPoint slides and OneNote pages with digital ink!

Recently I have thought about also going digital on my school's two heaviest textbooks, Medical-Surgical Nursing in Canada by Lewis, et al, and Canadian Fundamentals of Nursing by Potter & Perry, et al. It seems like it would save me a lot of lifting and stress if I just had them on my computer. My plan was to sell my physical textbooks and go with the digital editions.

So my questions:

1) Are Elesevier ebooks / PageBurst any good? What kind of functionality do you get?

2) What do you like about them? What do you not like?

3) Would you recommend ebooks / PageBurst to a friend?

~Thank you!

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We were 'required' to have them during school. I think it's a personal preference IMO. Some people like it. Others hated it. I personally liked it for the most part. We had a package of 16 books. All downloaded on my iPad. Used 4-5 throughout school. It was nice only carrying one device. Became a pain in the butt when trying to look up multiple things at once from different resources.

If u only have those 2 books, I'd say keep them and save your money.

Good luck

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I love them. When reading and studying, I have a split screen between PageBurst and Word. I love that I can highlight in PageBurst, make bookmarks, keep my place, and drag charts straight from PageBurst to a Word document. Plus, I have several pounds-worth of books all stored in my tiny Macbook Air, which has definitely saved my shoulder! I take my laptop everywhere I go, which means my books are always available to study.

ETA: Also, it makes looking things up super easy. Just type a key word into the search bar, and bam--there's your information.

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The best part of the e-books is the ability to *share* highlights - my instructor had spent the time adding highlights to her books & shared them with the class. You can't memorize the textbook & there's just too much material to know it all, but seeing her highlights gave us some insight into what the instructor though was "must know" for exams. Of course, the whole book & anything said during lectures was "testable" material..

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That's what I'm thinking, Purple_roses! My Surface goes almost everywhere with me! They say tougher times in nursing school are yet to come, and I was thinking ahead to what I could do to make things just a little better for me. Thanks again for the response! :)

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Sadly, most of my instructors seem to be not so digital, rzyzzy :unsure:

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Specializes in NICU, Trauma, Oncology.

Hate them. They are required by my program and I have bought hard copies of the books in out e-library.

Eta: I also have a surface. Works great for school. Just hate reading ebooks

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The search feature is not great. I find the paper books much easier to work with.

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Specializes in mental health / psychiatic nursing.

I find the paper books easier to work with when doing research. However I really like page burst for convenience, not lugging my books around saves my back, and I can easily look something up on my computer when I am on campus and away from my books. I think it depends on personal preference and how you learn and interact with written material. I'm some one who still greatly prefers paper books for most applications, however I have come to appreciate have e-book copies far more than I thought I would.

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It's been a while since I posted this question, and I'm glad to report that I've gone all digital books and I love it! VitalSource is very good! I'm also thinking about getting a Kindle for regular books :-)

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