Walsh University and ebrary: A Student’s Story

It looked like a long night at the library for Walsh University sophomore Santiago Zalazar. He had a deadline looming for a research paper on “prisoners of war vs. enemy combatants” for his International Law course, and pertinent information was not readily available on the library’s shelves.

“The topic was pretty recent, so it was really hard to find much information in print,” he said.

After several hours of searching through stacks of printed materials, Zalazar turned to Dan Suvak, Associate Dean for Library Services at Walsh University’s Brother Edmond Drouin Library. Suvak suggested ebrary.

Zalazar quickly accessed ebrary’s Academic Complete e-book database from the Walsh University website and conducted a simple search on “prisoners of war” and “enemy combatants.” Immediately, he was able to access a wealth of relevant, full-text e-books from renowned publishers such as Knopf, Random House, Brill Academic Publishing, Greenwood, and Cambridge University Press.

The search results included I Am a Soldier, Too: The Jessica Lynch Story by Rick Bragg and Jessica Lynch (Knopf, 2003); Anti-Terrorist Measures and Human Rights by Alice Yotopoulos-and Wolfgang Benedek et. Al, (Brill, 2004); Elements of War Crimes under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court: Sources and Commentary, by Louise Doswald-Beck, Robert Kolpin and Knut Domrann (Cambridge University Press, 2003); and Encyclopedia of War and Ethics by Donald A. Wells (Greenwood Publishing Group, 1996).

Because the ebrary system delivers e-books to a student’s desktop page-by-page rather than requiring cumbersome document downloads, Zalazar was able to instantly access the information he needed, then quickly navigate throughout the documents using the ebrary Reader™ toolbar.

“I could not believe ebrary’s speed and the accuracy of the search results,” he noted. “I was truly blown away.”

In fact, Zalazar was so pleased that he had to tell his professor about it that same night.

“I remembered that my professor had a night class that evening and would be taking a break from 7:15 to 7:30 to let students have a drink and stretch their legs, so I rushed to the classroom right when the break began to talk to her about ebrary,” he said.

While Zalazar supplemented his research with printed materials in the library, he said the vast majority of information came from ebrary.

“To be honest, the best information I found came from the e-books I got from ebrary,” he said.

According to Suvak, ebrary is the first digital resource he recommends to students doing research.

“We have several e-book products, but when working with students, I always search ebrary first because the results are so much easier to work with. Additionally, the students and I especially appreciate going right to the search term highlighted in the text, with a one-click option to jump to the next occurrence as well as other features for searching, navigating, and archiving information,” he said. “I’m very glad we have ebrary.”

Zalazar is currently using ebrary for a different research paper on the Cuban Missile Crisis, and is equally satisfied with the breadth and depth of available information. And, he continues to recommend ebrary to peers.

“Honestly, I can not think of anything that would make ebrary better,” he said.