Accessing Texts Via the Open Library

Wherever are on the globe, I think we are able to access a number of older texts via digitised copies of books via the US Library of Congress. Those texts are kept in a repository called the Open Library... and I have found that, by creating an account, I too have been able to check out a huge range of books.

To take a book out of the Open Library, go to https://openlibrary.org/, and create an account. Once done, we can search for our text in the search box at the top of the page. We can can either read online, or we can check out the book. We get a download a link to open the book using Adobe Digital Editions (which manages our loan).

Further, the Open Library has a copy of the first and second editions of Inkson et al. (2006, 2015). We can preview a copy by doing a search at the Open Library: https://openlibrary.org/search?q=Understanding+Careers&mode=everything (the one without a cover should be the second edition, 2015).

Older books in the Open Library catalogue are stored by the Internet Archive (https://archive.org/), which we can also search, providing we have already created our Open Library account. This is a great service, allowing us access to legends in the career field such as Parsons, Holland, Gottfredson, Levinson, and Super. Now that many of these texts are out of copyright, we may find - underneath the book viewing pane - that there is a pdf or ePub download link which we can open a full copy online, and save it ourselves.

Once we have run any searches at the Open Library, clicking the borrow button will take us to the Internet Archive to either read for an hour, or to download a link to read in Adobe Digital Editions for however long we would like to specify. Further, we can also

Very handy!

Sam

References:

Inkson, K., Dries, N., & Arnold, J. (2006). Understanding Careers (1st ed.). SAGE Publications Ltd.

Inkson, K., Dries, N., & Arnold, J. (2015). Understanding Careers (2nd ed.). SAGE Publications Ltd.