eBooks

The note-taking options for an eBook depend on whether you have a permanent or temporary copy and which method you are using to access the eBook:  online preview, Adobe Digital Editions, an e-reader, or Adobe Acrobat Reader.

For many eBooks, you can take notes and highlight text during the online preview.  You will usually be prompted to sign in or set up an individual account in the eBook collection in order to do so, and the annotations that you make will be stored within the collection's platform.  While there are usually options for printing or exporting your notes, the text of the book is not included, so highlights may be lost.

If you are reading an eBook using Adobe Digital Editions you can also use ADE to take notes and make highlights.  However, if you have borrowed the book for a specific loan period, the annotations will no longer be accessible once the loan expires.

For this reason, it is probably best to use ADE for note-taking in eBooks that you have permanently, unless you will only need the notes for duration of the borrowing period.

Most e-readers have built-in note taking capabilities.  Check the user manual or online help pages for your e-reader to discover the details.  As with Adobe Digital Editions, you may want to use e-reader note taking features only with permanent eBooks, since the notes might not be available once an eBook loan ends.

You can use Adobe Acrobat Reader to view and annotate the text of permanent PDFs such as parts of eBooks downloaded during a preview or entire eBooks downloaded from the Springer Collection.  The notes and highlights are saved directly in the PDF and do not expire.