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New! Ebook Central Research Assistant

by Deborah Duffy on 2025-04-16T09:25:38+01:00 in AI, Artificial Intelligence, E-books, Library News, Study Skills | 0 Comments

Launched this April by ProQuest, Research Assistant is a generative AI tool that creates key learning points and summarizes the contents of the e-book. Research Assistant helps you evaluate, analyse, and explore ideas whilst building critical thinking and research skills.

Research Assistant is only available for e-book titles that we have purchased for stock on the Ebook Central Platform or that are part of our subscription to the JISC e-books for FE Collection. If the Research Assistant isn’t available, it’s possible that the book isn’t part of our library’s collection or the publisher has chosen to opt out.

Research Assistant can be found on the left side of the reader for PDFs, or on the right side of the reader for EPUBs.

When you click on the Research Assistant button Research assistant button you will see an overview of the book, which is not AI Generated.  This overview is the same description you would find on the book details page.

Screenshot of e-book with description

Research Assistant has two options which are ‘Show key takeaway’ and ‘Show concepts discussed’.

Screenshot of key takeaway and concepts buttons

Key takeaways are a short one or two paragraph summary that has been generated from the content of each chapter.  They are intended to help you understand what the chapter is about in an easy-to-understand way so that you can quickly determine its relevance for your research.

Screen shot of key takeaway example from EPUB

Concepts are a list of the top five concepts in each chapter. The identified Concepts include an explanation of the term as described or defined in the chapter. These contextual explanations provide a better understanding of complex topics, nurturing your critical thinking skills. Each concept is hyperlinked so that you can run a search on any individual term by clicking on it.

Screenshot of example of concepts for PDF

 


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