With Bookshelf, you can enjoy a digital-first, comprehensive study experience from the convenience of your Android phone or tablet. Access all of your VitalSource textbooks and study anytime, anywhere.
Bookshelf Features:
• Download books to your Android device for 100% offline reading.
• Customize highlighters and add notes for a rich study experience.
• Create flashcards with text and images to learn concepts faster.
• Personalize font, font size, and background colors to make reading easier.
• Listen to your books and learn on the go with Read Aloud.
• Sync your current reading position and all your work across devices so you can easily pick up where you left off.
• Built with accessibility in mind.
Requirements:
• VitalSource Bookshelf account
• Access to one or more VitalSource textbooks.
• Android 5.0+
Everything on here is pretty straight forward and easy to use. The only thing that could use work is the function of the app reading to you. I found this glitchy and it would read the bottom disclaimers and reference notes. It also reads out of order and jumps around mid paragraph so it gets confusing especially if you are trying to listen while driving. Basically impossible to follow if you aren’t looking at the highlighted text. For this reason I gave it a 4 star
The app (which claims to have the full functionality of the desktop site) does not let me make any changes to how I read the book (only shows double page, side by side with no option to change to single page). Uninstalling and just using the webpage version is better but still overall terrible experience, constant resizing and popping back pages, etc.. The fact that I have to use this service to access my text book I paid for is honestly just absurd.
The app works fine in terms of being able to turn the page and take notes here and there. But many of the extra features are so flawed they’re effectively useless. The most egregious that I’ve noticed is the search ability. There is often little correlation between what I search and what comes up in the results, and there’s even times when I type a phrase verbatim to what is held in the book and it still doesn’t show up in the book. Would definitely not use if my CFP course didn’t require it.
This app is terrible. As a faculty member books are not populating in the app. after they are purchased/sampled. On a laptop or pc it works great. Mobile device is another story. Also, there is no way to delete books since there appears to be a limited amount you can have in your bookshelf. Very frustrating.
It’s nice to be able to listen to my textbooks while walking or doing household chores, saving me a little time. And it spares me from the eyestrain of too much screentime, which is a huge plus for me. But often it won’t resume playing after pausing or will close the app altogether if I open another app, or it will pause indefinitely for no reason at all while I have the phone in my pocket. I think it helps a little to change the system settings to not optimize battery for this app
I can’t see charts and tables. They are too small. I have to use the Bookshelf app for Windows to see them. I like to listen when driving or doing housework, but every 2 minutes, I have to pick up my phone & turn it 90 degrees to get it to continue to play. The distraction caused by constantly picking up my phone & rotating it to continue to listen to my textbook is not exactly safe when stuck in traffic on the freeway. Hard to multitask when I have to stop & rotate phone to continue housework.
I love being able to access my textbooks on literally all of my devices ! It’s definitely come in handy in terms of finding time to study. The app has a clean interface and is easy to download and navigate through. Its not a huge download either so it won’t make your devices lag in return for having the app. Absolutely love this app!!!
Not great for audible reading bc voice is generic robo computer. If you want to be able to listen to someone read out loud in a non robo voice, purchase book on audible. BUT, good for on the go e-reading, highlighting passages, and notes. If you are using a desktop, its convenient to have bookshelf open in one window and another window when you are writing your paper assignment. If vital source purchases the license for the audible for the books, this would be the #1 app we all use.
I’ve used bookshelf for a few of my school textbooks. It makes the classes so much easier. It allows you to highlight and take notes as well as listen to the text at different speeds. I can get my reading done alot better and more thoroughly with this app. I just wish every textbook I bought was on it!
If you have any other option for textbooks, DO NOT USE THIS SERVICE. Slow, clunky, barely usable. The best thing I can say about this app is that by comparison every other book app is flawless. I have the textbooks downloaded on the app and it still takes several seconds to load each page. This may not seem like a big issue, but they only let you jump between the first page of the chapter. To go and find anything you have to skim page by page and wait while each page loads individual, only to place over the page to the next one. Mean while by the time you get anywhere, you have completely forgotten about what you where looking for to begin with. In short stay far away from this app
This app is a nightmare to use. I downloaded it to my tablet, thinking it would be useful to have an offline version of the textbook I am working with available on my tablet while being in the lab. It is not. Content takes forever to load. Trying to look at figures linked in the text more often than not leads to jumping back to the beginning of the chapter, or simply doesnt work at all. Text of one entire section is squisted into a few unreadable lines, and updating doesn’t change that… Fun!
Worked fine until the latest update. Now it won’t open, after restarting device and uninstalling the app. Prior to update: worked fine on a Chromebook. I wish there was an option to underline text, not just highlight, which would make scanning for content a little easier. Otherwise, the book is easy to read, controls are pretty intuitive (putting the menu button in the top left like all other apps would be my only suggestion).
Bookshelf is much better on a PC. The Android app is really glitchy, either text won’t load, or the app will freeze and you have to close it and restart the app to get it to work, this happens every 5-10 minutes for me. The layout is also pretty frustrating with some of the textbooks but it is what it is, if it didn’t freeze up so much I wouldn’t have a problem. Only app I have real issues with, if I were to do it again I’d rent a book through a different company.
Being able to have digital textbooks is life-changing for me going back to school this time around, and this app allows me to do so in a way that’s very easy to use! The features to read aloud, highlight, take notes, search, and jump between pages are intuitive and exactly what I need to help me process and retain the information. Some complaints are I can’t find a way to download my books to my SD card instead of internal storage, and I’ve been encountering some issues with highlighting.
The virtual audio reader option could use some improvements to make it much more effective. It could use a lot more smart technology. As it is currently it is almost too frustrating to use. The voice is mechanical and does not read correctly. Words are mispronounced and inconsistent. It reads every word on the page in order even if the page is not laid out in order. It reads the copyright at the end of every page. The voice inflections are incorrect and do not make sense.
Having to read and highlight and search through a book bought from Vitalsource within the app and on a PC can be very cumbersome. You’re forced to open your orchard purchased books in this manner like Kindle but with much more limitations. Pros: – Copy and pasting creates an annotation. Making it easier for papers. – Flashcard creation for studying. – Text to speech capabilities. Cons: – Page turning is slow. – You may only print 2 pages at a time. – The amount of text you and copy and paste is limited. – Searching is difficult. It requires you to use quotation marks for exact terms. This wasn’t explained anywhere. – No landscape feature on mobile phones. I actually suggest buying the book in physical form instead. This way you can own the book and not rent for a certain amount of time or buy it for a high price. Normally digital versions of books are a little cheaper. This is not the case with VitalSource.
For the most part, this app is good. However, it could use some improvements. First of all, I wish it had a setting to highlight few but LARGE font sentences. I have used NaturalReader and it’s excellent when it comes to that but our school forced us to use this app. Second, the app keeps stopping when I am using it in the background. I would say it’s an Android limitation but then I tried EZPDF and I didn’t have the same issue. If these issues can be addressed then it would be an excellent app.
This app has its moments. The pc version is worse than the app. Both versions coincide with each other which is great when highlighting on one or reading cause it takes you back to where you left off. The audible reader is so monotone it puts you to sleep and it’s pronunciation is ridiculous. Highlighting can be difficult on the phone. The app has crashed on me a few times and just stopped working. But I close it out and just start it over.
Overall a good app. This is my first year in college and using this app helps me manage reading my books while I’m at work. Only problem is that the books I need to read will randomly become unavailable to read. I have no idea why it happens but if I try to read one textbook than switch the other one than the one I’m switching to wont open. It says its time has ran out or something. Its pretty annoying.
I like the Read Aloud feature but it sounds unnatural. It’s not like my Google Assistant or Siri. However, it still makes it easier to get through all my reading. So can’t complain too much. I do wish it would automatically sync my most recent read location with other devices. For example, I use the audio on my phone but want to be able to read from my tablet and pick up where I left off.
Downloaded this app so I can read on the go for my school work assignments. And this app is horrible. All the words are squished together even when I flip my phone to portrait. I can’t highlight and copy for notes. And the pages are cut off on the right side so of course all the sentences are cut off. I’m paying a lot of money to go back to school. I expect the tools I need to work appropriately. Total waste of time and storage on my cell.
As an undergraduate student who attends classes online- Bookshelf is an amazing addition to my studying/reading methods. While the features are ever expanding- there is something for everyone. If you dont like to read as much, then you can have your book narrated to you. Along with the features to highlight and save the most relevant Information. Plus, once I am finished with the classes I still have access to all of the books that I have purchased/ received through school!!
Vital Source has the absolute worst UI of any proffesionial book applications I’ve worked with. You can quickly navigate the pages efficiently, and there are small glitches that seem to happen constantly and consistently. If the entire service you offer is supposed to be a platform for books, it should feel like it’s made by someone who knows what they’re doing and has been full tested and FIXED
The flash cards are a great idea if the highlighter did not highlight everything I touch and I can not find a way to delete all these highlights. I love all the study tools but they are not user friendly. I have been using this app for almost 3 years now and the issues are still the same. Please fix and you will have the number one app, I love the format the colors, etc. Have a blessed day and stay safe
Started out well, but today as I am trying to do my reading for class it has messed up the page I was on. I have the page zoomed in for better reading. When I changed pages, it froze with the center of the screen gray and a partial view of previous page on the left and next page on the right. I had to force stop the app to be able to access the pages so I could continue reading. This has happened twice today.
This app is okay. I have used several e-book distributors / text readers. This one is on the low-end of the accessibility scale. It needs more robust accessibility features. The e-reader needs more settings (such as adjusting how much the rewind/forward button goes). This app needs to remove (or at least make a setting to remove) the ‘restart button’ for the e-reader function. It gets in the way. Also, this app has this bug where the e-reader’s audio and visual speed are not alligned.
I do not see any of the titles I have in my library, which was discovered several months ago and I subsequently deleted the app. Thought they’d fix this, so I have just reinstalled it. To my disappointment, I still see nothing in my library. It is a useless app, so I am going to uninstall. Will not recommend it anyone including my students. Update – I have contacted vitalsource’s support and they fixed my issue of not seeing my books due to policy change. Now things work well. Many thanks!
I have only had those app for about 20 minutes and it deems very difficult to use. You can only turn pages by tapping the screen so it is constantly turning the page when I don’t want it to. The highlight function isn’t working properly. The text is hard to read because it is so small so then I zoom in but then makes it more difficult to highlight and navigate. I only got this app because of a book that I can only access via the app otherwise I don’t recommend. Very disappointed.
The app has definitely been improved, but we shouldn’t still see all these issues in 2022. The text to speech is horrible, the app works with minimal functionality in windows or Android, and there are still many issues with typos and formatting. When you rotate the screen it shouldn’t change where you are by several pages. I love the highlighting option, but I just keep falling back on the text to speech. I can’t stand your app for this alone.
Look, I’ve only had this app for about an hour, but I can already tell you that you only get the one star because you offer a text-to-voice option, and that it is able to run in the background. The voice itself is absolutely TERRIBLE! Somehow it is both horribly mechanical, and yet still pronounces the word customer like “customah” at least half the time. Furthermore, you don’t need to read the copyright information for every caption, a move that shows just how painfully lazy this app is made.
I use this on the go because this is what the school has provided as an e-book. Tables will look funny if made to a half page, which I can understand and can deal with. What’s annoying is the fact that I’ll be studying and possible highlighting/noting something, and the page goes directly to the top or bottom – or even randomly! Already tried to uninstall and reinstall to no success of solving this issue per VitalSource. Also, still unable to un-highlight through mobile app. Super annoying.
We no longer have the option of changing fonts or colors. This is very bad for dyslexics who need less contrasting colors & different fonts of larger sizes so we can actually have a chance to read our texts for school. The text is so small I have to use a magnifying glass while looking at my phone to make out anything, & it’s so contrasty with a terrible font that I can’t read it anyway. It never remembered settings causing you to constantly lose your place. This is no way to treat students.
This app does not work well on my chromebook. When clicking on a section from the table of contents, I am taken back to the beginning of the chapter and then asked to click on the page number at the bottom. It doesn’t scroll well after a few idol minutes. It’s like the app lost my place and takes me back to the beginning of the chapter. It’s very frustrating constantly “refreshing”. The app usually opens where I left off, but it doesn’t let me do anything on that page without starting over.
The Android reader does not reflow the text when you adjust the font size. Instead you have swipe to the right 2 or 3 times to read a full line, then swipe back left 2 or 3 times to get to the start of the next line. That makes the $107 book I purchased virtually unreadable. Is there a solution being worked on for this? If not I want my purchase price refunded. This “ebook” meets no standards for ebooks at all and shouldn’t be described as such. I will be contacting the publisher as well.
Text to speech needs fixes. Everytime my phone rotates, the text to speech exits. It also is difficult to navigate. Allowing me to tap where I want to have the reading start would be very helpful. The pause feature is also more of a stop, where when I tap play, the reader starts from the last place I was able to get it to start reading from. The word tracking also is glitchy, and will stop entirely on occasion. Microsoft Edge has a better text to speech program. Otherwise, a decent app.
Slow. Paid way too much for an e-book that always requires updates (????) and waiting ~20 seconds every time I jump to a different page (especially bad given the typical use case of doing questions then checking the back of the book). Finding a PDF of my book, not to get out of paying for it, but to be able to read it in my own reader, seems like the better choice at this point.
This app is very good for getting deals on textbooks direct from the publisher. However, even on downloaded books my computer gets very hot and the battery is strained from the app. Somewhat frequently, the page will quickly snap up to an earlier portion of reading. Also, chapters are condensed into one “page” to scroll rather than a more natural page by page reading.
This app is great… I especially like the read aloud feature, which lets me listen to textbooks while doing housework or art… a definite plus to staying awake while reading! I would have given it 5 stars, but there is a serious glitch in the citing function… if the book has more than 1 author, it will list only one author and then have a string of initials that represent the rest of them. And they are in the wrong order. That seriously needs to be fixed. Makes reference lists look silly.
go back to inkling. top of app screen sometimes obscures first line. can’t play video. can’t zoom into images-this basically is a deal-killer for a small screen for highly technical graphs and figures. will bookmark and annotate, but every reader app does this. of course, you can always default to accessibility features if your os and device support, but don’t we wish we didn’t have to resort to that?
Define function is not working, it just google word “dictionary”. The text is very hard to read or adjust to the phone screen, not like an ebook, rather like a pdf file – you have to pinch to zoom in and out all the time. Text to speech sounds like robot from old sci-fi. I would not use this software at all, if I wasn’t forced to by my school. The PC version is even worse…