Programs for reading e-books

If you download e-books from our library to read offline, please make sure that you have the correct software to read them on your laptop or smartphone. As for the start of August, our e-books for download are now largely in ACSM format, which cannot be read by Adobe Acrobat. (This does not affect viewing e-books online).

You can use the following free readers to read downloaded ACSM format e-books:

Windows/Mac users can download Adobe Digital Editions (http://www.adobe.com/uk/products/digital-editions/download.html)

For smartphones, there are several options. VLE Books provide details of VLEBooks eBook reader for iOS (https://www.vlebooks.com/vleweb/Help/iOSHelp) and Android (https://www.vlebooks.com/vleweb/Help/AndroidHelp)

The Bluefire Reader (http://www.bluefirereader.com/bluefire-reader.html) is also available for iOS, Android and Windows.

If you are still having problems, please contact library.technical@beds.ac.uk, so we can be aware of any problems 

Ebooks - getting your computer to read aloud to you

Adobe Reader has a 'Read Out Loud' feature which allows books to be read aloud by a computer once they have been downloaded. To use this simply hold the control, shift and Y keys down at the same time, or choose ‘Read out Loud’ from the View menu.

For more information see the Adobe help pages or this video tutorial.

Dawsonera ebooks and pdf readers other than Adobe

If you are using a pdf reader other than Adobe (if you have a Mac or are running Linux, for example) you will find that Dawsonera ebooks do not work properly. The Dawsonera FAQ page states:

The ebooks are presented as PDFs and read using Adobe Reader. We recommend the latest Version but Versions 7, 8 and 9 are fine.

If this affects you then the best thing to do is to get Adobe reader for your computer (it's free, and available for lots of operating systems).