The great majority of books received on electronic legal deposit (eLD) come in EPUB format. While this has advantages in terms of long-term preservation of the text, it does mean that such ebooks lack page numbers, rendering traditional methods of citation impossible. This issue has been raised as a matter of urgent concern by the legal deposit libraries, including Cambridge. Meanwhile it is suggested that reference is made to chapter and paragraph number.

Journal articles received on eLD are mostly in PDF format and so have page numbers, as do those eresources (books and journals) to which Cambridge University Library subscribes. 

Here a citation example in the Harvard style:

In-text citation:

In his analysis, McClelland (2016, chapter 4, para 2) argues that the pervasive four-measure groupings...

Reference list:

McClelland, Ryan C. (2016) Brahms and the scherzo: studies in musical narrative [Restricted Access Ebook]. Ashgate Publishing. Available at: https://cam.ldls.org.uk

Unfortunately you will need to count the paragraph numbers yourself from the beginning of the relevant chapter.

Adding a format description

Access to ELD ebooks is restricted to certain terminals, unlike standard ebooks. It makes sense to provide readers who may attempt to follow up your references with some indication of this via a format description in your reference list:

McClelland, Ryan C. (2016) Brahms and the scherzo: studies in musical narrative [Restricted Access Ebook]. Ashgate Publishing. Available at: https://cam.ldls.org.uk

URLs

Many citation styles require the inclusion of a URL for electronic resources. For eLD books, we recommend using the standard  https://cam.ldls.org.uk for all the titles. Readers of your references who are not using a special eLD terminal will be redirected to information about Electronic Legal Deposit access and a list of available terminals.

How I do I know if I'm looking at a PDF or EPUB title?

To find out which format you are dealing with on an eLD terminal, check the dark grey bar which appears along the top of the screen when viewing a book. On the far left you will see the file name of the book. EPUB files appear with the .epub extension.