Best Bets for E-books
- O'Reilly Safari Learning Platform This link opens in a new windowE-books in computer science, information technology, business, and related fields. Includes many programming language manuals from O'Reilly, Pearson, and others. Also offers many videos, case studies, and tutorials. Note: Requires authentication. Select "institution not listed" below the institutions dropdown list and enter your oberlin.edu email address.
- SpringerLink This link opens in a new windowMillions of full text scientific documents from journals, books, series, protocols, reference works and proceedings. (Dates of coverage: 1815-present)
OBIS
Find books, e-books, videos, scores, and recordings at Oberlin by title, author, subject, keyword, or other options.
OhioLINK
Can't find a book at Oberlin? Find and request materials held at 120 OhioLINK libraries. Requested items are delivered to the circulation desk on the first floor of Mudd Center, typically within 3-5 business days. The OhioLINK catalog describes over 46 million items, including books, periodicals, maps, music scores and audiovisual materials.
Call Number Browsing
Most books that relate to computer science are shelved in the Terrell Main Library, with call numbers beginning:
QA
76
You can browse them online by inputting QA76 as a Library of Congress number search in OBIS.
Reading Call Numbers
There are two major call number systems used in the libraries: the Dewey Decimal and Library of Congress classification schemes. The first line of a call number, as it appears on a physical item, is a broad subject classification. The subsequent lines are combinations of letters and numbers that organize items into narrower, related categories.
The example in the Library of Congress column is for the book Computer Science: a Very Short Introduction. Check it out!
| Library of Congress | Dewey Decimal |
| QA Alphabetically 76 Whole number |
510.78 Whole number, followed by decimals |
| D314 Alphabetically, then decimals (may be followed by another letter) |
.C698C Alphabetically, then decimals |
| 2016 Publication Date, shelves chronologically | e.g., 510.78 C698C shelves before 510.78 C7A |
See How to Read Call Numbers from the University of Berkeley Library for more details about LC call numbers.
Recently Received in the OC Libraries
Swarm Intelligence: from social bacteria to humans by ISBN: 9780367137939Publication Date: 2020-07-15The notion of swarm intelligence was introduced for describing decentralized and self-organized behaviors of groups of animals. Then this idea was extrapolated to design groups of robots which interact locally to cumulate a collective reaction. Some natural examples of swarms are as follows: ant colonies, bee colonies, fish schooling, bird flocking, horse herding, bacterial colonies, multinucleated giant amoebae Physarum polycephalum, etc. In all these examples, individual agents behave locally with an emergence of their common effect.
Redesigning AI: work, democracy, and justice in the age of automation by ISBN: 9781946511621Publication Date: 2021-05-25A look at how new technologies can be put to use in the creation of a more just society. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is not likely to make humans redundant. Nor will it create superintelligence anytime soon. But it will make huge advances in the next two decades, revolutionize medicine, entertainment, and transport, transform jobs and markets, and vastly increase the amount of information that governments and companies have about individuals.
Your Wit Is My Command: building AIs with a sense of humor by ISBN: 9780262045995Publication Date: 2021-09-07For fans of computers and comedy alike, an accessible and entertaining look into how we can use artificial intelligence to make smart machines funny.
Artificial Intelligence and the Environmental Crisis by ISBN: 9780367152000Publication Date: 2020-01-29A radical and challenging book which argues that artificial intelligence needs a completely different set of foundations, based on ecological intelligence rather than human intelligence, if it is to deliver on the promise of a better world.
Cunning Machines by ISBN: 9780367898021Publication Date: 2020-02-28....explains the main concepts: what does AI really mean, where do we find it, how do scientists try to evaluate it, what are its main limitations and what future we can expect with it? It also describes the most popular AI techniques in an easy-to-digest form: Artificial neural networks Genetic algorithms The Monte Carlo method Natural language processing Ontologies and their applications
Finding eBooks
Tens of thousands of computer science-related ebooks are accessible through OBIS. Click on the ebooks tab in OBIS to get started, or limit any search to location=Internet.
As of February 2023, a search on the subject heading "computer science" results in well over 11,900 titles when limited to the location "Internet."
InterLibrary Loan
Can't find what you need? For books, try OhioLINK. For books not available through OhioLINK and for other types of materials, use Interlibrary Loan (ILL). ILL lets you borrow materials from non-OhioLINK libraries, including print books, scanned journal articles, musical scores, videos, theses/dissertations, and more.
Contact ill@oberlin.edu with questions.