Listen to articles and books

You can listen either by downloading a PDF (ebook chapters or journal articles) or a built-in facility on the PEP Archive database

Listening to PDFs using the Read Out Loud function

You can download PDFs from ebooks or online journals and listen to them using the Read Out Loud function on Adobe Acrobat Reader. If you don’t already have it, you can download Adobe Acrobat Reader for free.

First download a chapter from an ebook on your reading list and save it to your computer as a PDF. To do this on EBSCO ebook, log into the ebook, go to the chapter you require using the contents menu on the left of the page. Choose ‘Save Pages’ from menu bar at top, then select ‘This Section’ and click ‘Save PDF’.

Screenshot of options to save a PDF from an EBSCO database

For Taylor & Francis and Wiley ebooks, you’ll have the option of downloading individual chapters from the main contents of web page for the ebook.

Most online journals will have an option to download an article as a PDF (except PEP Archive, see below).

Next open the saved PDF on your computer (it will most likely be in your downloads folder). Go to menu bar and click on view. Click on ‘Read Out Loud’ – make sure the sound is enabled on your computer!

Screenshot displaying the View menu option for finding the Read Out Loud function on Adobe Reader

Listening/Downloading MP from PEP Archive

You can also listen to or download extracts from the PEP archive as MP3 files so you can listen to them later. See below an example. To listen, login and open the book as usual. When you are in the book click on ‘HTML Full Text’.

Screenshot of a page on PEP Archive that shows the Listen option for the audio version of a book or article

Next, go to listen toolbar and adjust accent, speed etc. via settings if desired. Now go to the section in the book you want to listen to and select the text you want to hear. When you have selected the text the sound player toolbar will appear as above. Click play to listen online immediately or click the download icon to save as a MP3 sound file so you can listen on computer/mobile device later on.

Troubleshooting

These features may not work on some mobile sites. If you experience problems try going to the desktop version.
Read Out Loud does not work on PDFs of book chapters or journal articles that have been scanned from print as the quality is not good enough for the system to translate them into sound.