eZproxy authentication – scheduled maintenance – Friday 26 and Saturday 27 April 2024

A scheduled system maintenance period for eZproxy authentications services will begin Friday 26 and Saturday 27 April between 22:00 and 07:00 hours.

The provider advises that this authentication service will be unavailable for approximately two hours during this maintenance window so off-campus access to some of our electronic resources and journals may be unavailable during this time and you may see a connection timeout or connection refused page.

Screenshot of an example timeout page

The provider advises that in the event of access issues to try again later or outside of the scheduled maintenance period.

Time to update your old LexisLibrary links

AFTER UPGRADING TO a new platform several months ago, Lexis+ UK (formerly known as LexisLibrary) is now planning to stop redirecting any old LexisLibrary links to Lexis+ UK on Sunday 21 April.

Before this date, please consider using the redirect to update LexisLibrary links you may have bookmarked, as any of these links will return error messages such as “Service Unavailable” or “Unfortunately we can’t find the page you’re looking for” after the service is decommissioned. LexisLibrary links have ‘www.lexisnexis.com’ as part of their URL, while new Lexis+ links use ‘plus.lexis.com’.

Past April 21, accessing these resources from outdated bookmarks will require to manually search for them in the new platform, and create new bookmarks from permalinks in Lexus+ UK if you wish to save them again.

If you have bookmarked old LexisLibrary links and need assistance in updating them, please get in touch with the library.

VLeBooks unavailable – scheduled maintenance on 6-7 April 2024

Browns Books has advised that the VLeBooks website will be unavailable from Saturday 6 April, 10pm (GMT) to Sunday 7 April, 4am (GMT) due to planned maintenance. Please note this will affect the VLe Reader which provides access to several eBooks in our library collections.

Extra guidance added to Single Sign On error response

FOLLOWING RECENT SECURITY enhancements to the configuration of NTU’s Single Sign On environment (which enables staff and students to log in to online resources using their university username and password), library customers are more likely to occasionally encounter a ‘stale request’ error.

This error can occur for a number of reasons, but its most frequent cause is that some of the session information stored in the user’s web browser has timed out, and is therefore no longer acceptable to the SSO system. The most effective and reliable solution to the problem is to clear the cache on the requesting browser and then sign in afresh.

The ‘stale request’ error has been generating regular service queries for library teams from staff and students, who are understandably unsure what the error means or how to resolve it.

The ‘out of the box’ error response in the SSO system provides no next-step guidance.

Working with colleagues in Digital Technologies, the library has now been able to arrange the deployment of a customised error response in the SSO environment, which returns a more meaningful message and which includes links to online guidance on cache clearing and further support. (As the SSO system supports authenticated access to a wide range of university applications and systems, it’s appropriate for the main Service Desk to triage any service calls which might arise.)

The new response message will appear in the browser as in the screenshot below:

The text of the new response message is as follows:

Authentication error: please clear your browser cache!

A technical problem has occurred which is causing your login request to this resource to be rejected.

To ensure that you’re able to authenticate successfully, you’ll first need to clear the sign-in data cached by your browser before trying again to access this resource.

The Digital Technologies team at Nottingham Trent University provide an up-to-date walkthrough which explains how to clear the cache of all the most popular browsers. Follow the simple steps in the How to clear your Cache on iPad, PC and Mac guide.

If the problem persists after clearing your cache, please contact support@ntu.ac.uk, with details of your device, browser and the resource you are trying to access.

Kortext platform loading issues

We are currently experiencing some issues with loading titles on the Kortext web browser. You may see the following error message when trying to read a book on screen:

Thank you for your patience while the supplier is working on a fix.

The Kortext app should load books as normal and can be used in the meantime. The app is downloadable from the Account dropdown menu on the top right corner. When prompted to log in, use your NTU email address and you will be redirected to the institutional sign-on page.

Kogan Page books temporarily unavailable

We are currently experiencing a loss of access for several of our CIPD Kogan Page books, with links returning the following error message: ‘Connection refused by ebs-patron.eb20.com, please try again later’.

Thank you for your patience while we working with the supplier to resolve this technical issue.