Exact Editions is now working with publishers to offer libraries and institutions subscriptions to collections of books. Carcanet, MuseumsEtc and Dunedin Academic Press are now joined by a Collection of 48 Graphic Guides from Icon. Collections using the Exact Editions platform have some important advantages not found with simple groupings of eBooks or PDF files. The Collection is highly browse-able, in the sense that it is easy to flip between different books in the Collection and to view all the double page spreads from a title in a grid layout , and it fully and easily searchable. So individual titles are searchable and the group as a whole is searchable (and if several Collections are accessible in the account, all those Collections will be searchable).

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Array of front covers — wide coverage

Searching the books is context sensitive, in that if you are at the collection page, the search will default to the collection as a whole, whereas within an individual title, the search will by default be for the book. The search window hints at the scope with greyed label.

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Nietzsche book – falling out with Schopenhauer and Wagner

The Graphic Guides from Icon books have been phenomenally successful in print and they transfer very well to a digital format in which every page can be linked to or cited through social media. These factors suggest that the series is ideally suited to being a campus wide reference and teaching resource, with a multi-user unlimited usage licensing model at base.

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Click the image to see the tweet

These Graphic Guides are a popular library item in their print form, they will become more popular and more useful as a resource which can be always available (24X7) throughout the campus, and the fact that they can be searched and easily browsed and flipped through is surely a digital bonus. I spent some time this morning reading the Postmodernism title and was considerably enlightened. Next I will go for Derrida

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Derrida in the ICON Graphic Guides Collection

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