eBrary eBook access problem – resolved

While we have yet to receive final confirmation from eBrary’s technical team that the service issue has been completely resolved, access to eBrary eBook titles through both eSearch and the Library Catalogue is currently available once again.

eBrary eBook access problem

Access to eBook content on the eBrary platform is currently unavailable, due to a technical problem preventing successful login to the service. Requests to access eBrary from either eSearch or from the Library Catalogue resolve to the following error (after an attempted login).

Your identity provider didn’t return the attributes required to log into eBrary.

We are working with colleagues in IS and in the eBrary technical support team to identify the cause of the problem, and the remedial action required to correct it.

A further update will follow once access has been restored.

eBrary – Academic Complete records withdrawn from the Library Catalogue

Following the previously announced changes to LLR’s subscription to eBook content on the eBrary platform, all of the individual eBook records for all titles in the eBrary Academic Complete collection have now been withdrawn from the Library Catalogue. The remaining eBrary eBook records in the OPAC are for the titles within the new eBrary Custom Collection (which LLR is building in preference to the Academic Complete collection).

eBrary – access problems resolved

eBrary’s technical team report that the issue affecting access to eBook content on the platform (25 January) has now been resolved, and all relevant content should now be accessible once again. Please contact eServices it you encounter any further problems with access.

eBrary – access problems affecting eBook content

eBrary’s technical team is working to resolve a problem which is causing access problems to eBook titles on the eBrary platform.

Some customers clicking on links to eBrary eBook titles in the Library Catalogue will see their browser resolve to the eBrary site with the following error message:

The URL entered or pasted is not one we recognize. If you copied and pasted the URL to get here, please double check the format. Make sure all the terms are there and that the URL contains no spaces or return characters.

Not all requests result in the error, and eBrary’s technicians currently believe that the Internet Explorer browser in more susceptible to the problem than Firefox – and recommend trying the Firefox browser in preference (though this will not guarantee successful access).

A further update will follow once eBrary’s technical team has confirmed that the problem has been resolved.

eBrary – changes to collection content from February 2010

Libraries and Learning Resources’ subscription to the Academic Complete collection of eBooks on the eBrary platform concludes at the end of January.

Rather than subscribing to this package of 30K+ titles (not all of which were well used by staff and students) the Academic Liaison Team has identified a sub-set of several hundred key titles from within the collection which LLR wishes to offer continuing access to.

Access to these titles, from 1 Feburary 2010, have now been arranged with eBrary through a new Custom Collection put together for LLR. Titles in the eBrary Custom collection are grouped into three types:

* Multi-user access – perpetual: LLR has bought these titles outright, in perpetuity. There is no limit to the number of customers who may access these titles at any one time.

* Single-user access – perpetual: LLR has bought these titles outright, in perpetuity. Only one customer may access these titles at any one time.

* Multi-user access – rental: LLR has subscribed to these titles. There is no limit to the number of customers who may access these titles at any one time. Continuing access to these titles is dependent on LLR maintaining a subscription.

New records have been added to ALEPH for all of the eBrary Custom Collection titles. Before the end of the next week (when LLR’s subscription to the eBrary Academic Complete collection expires) all of the eBrary Academic Complete catalogue records will be removed from ALEPH. Until then, duplicate catalogue records will appear for those eBrary titles which are in both the Academic Complete and Custom collections.

When reviewing an individual eBrary catalogue record within the OPAC, LLR staff can identify the type of eBrary eBook they are looking at, as follows:

In the Full View of Record, click on the MARC tags option (see illustration below):

In the 900 field of the MARC record, a description of the eBrary collection to which the title belongs is provided:

All eBrary catalogue records containing the description ‘This eBook is part of the eBrary Academic Complete subscription‘ will be withdrawn (see illustration below):

All eBrary catalogue records containing one of the three descriptions below will be retained:

If you’ve any questions about the changes to eBrary content, please contact Acquisitions Manager Paul Tomlinson. If you’ve any technical questions about the transition to the new collection, please contact Lib eServices.

A further update will be provided next week when all of the eBrary Academic Complete collection records have been withdrawn from ALEPH.

eBrary eBook platform – access problems resolved

The access problems affecting the eBrary eBook platform (reported on Tuesday 8 December) have now been fully resolved. eBrary’s technicians were able to resolve most of the access issues later the same day, though some secondary problems persisted. This morning, eBrary were able to confirm that all remaining access issues had been dealt with and the service was fully operational once again.

eBrary eBook collection unavailable

The eBrary eBook web site is currently unavailable. Requests to all eBrary titles through the Library Catalogue, or to the eBrary platform itself through eSearch, are returning the following error:

Our site is unavailable at the moment
We are installing improvements to our service.
We apologize for the inconvenience.
Please check back later.

This is not a scheduled downtime, but a loss of service which eBrary anticipate that they will be able to correct shortly.

A further update will follow once eBrary have confirmed that access to the service has been restored.

eBrary bookshelf migration

As indicated in an earlier update, LLR customers who previously logged in to the eBrary eBook platform using an Athens username and password and who wish to retain access to their customised eBrary Bookshelf content can have that content moved across to their new eBrary account (based on their university username and password).

Instructions on how to arrange the transfer had been added to a ‘Bookshelf Migration Instructions’ button in the banner of the eBrary interface.

However, initial experience suggests that some customers have found the process difficult to follow. As a result, migration requests will now be mediated by the eServices team who will liaise with eBrary support on the customer’s behalf to arrange the transfer. An updated and simplified version of the instructions now reads:

From 1 September 2009, access to ebooks on the ebrary platform for Nottingham Trent University staff and students is by university username and password.

If you have logged into ebrary previously (using an Athens username and password) you may have stored notes, bookmarks and highlighted sections of text in your ebrary Bookshelf.

If you do not want to retain any of the ebrary Bookshelf data that you previously created under your Athens login, you need take no further action. However, if you want to transfer this Bookshelf data so that you can access it with your university username and password, please do the following:

Send an email with the subject line eBrary bookshelf migration to eServices email address and include your university username in the body of the email.

LLR will then arrange with ebrary support to have your bookshelf content migrated to your new university username and password login.

Once confirmation has been received from eBrary that the migration has been completed, the eServices team will contact the customer by email and ask them to confirm that the process has been successful.

eBrary – Shibboleth authentication

Access to eBooks on the eBrary platform is now by university username and password (using Shibboleth). Because of the way in which Shibboleth authentication is managed for LLR’s subscription to eBrary, all existing URLs in eSearch, SFX and the Library Catalogue will continue to work as before, but will now resolve to the NTU Single Sign-on page rather than to an Athens login screen. Staff and students who wish to retain their customised eBrary content (stored in their Bookshelf) will need to contact eBrary to arrange the migration of data to their new login. A guide to the simple email-based process is provided via a ‘Bookshelf Migration’ link from the Nottingham Trent University banner in the eBrary interface (see illustration below).

Athens to Shibboleth migrations – eBrary and RefWorks

The move from Athens to Shibboleth authentication for both eBrary and RefWorks is now scheduled to take place during the last two weeks of August.

RefWorks’ technical team are running tests on a sample data set that we have provided before moving to the wholesale transfer of the existing accounts from Athens to Shibboleth identifiers – this will mean that existing customer accounts (including all saved references and folders) will be automatically transfered over when the move to Shibboleth is effected.

For LLR customers with ‘Bookshelf’ content (saved favourites, notes, highlighted sections of eBooks, etc) in their eBrary account, a different method has been agreed with the providers. Once the Shibboleth login process has been activated on eBrary, customers will have the option to pull across their previously stored ‘Bookshelf’ information from their Athens to their Shibboleth account. This involves the customer copying a ‘key’ number from the screen into an email to eBrary along with their Athens username; eBrary then manage the move of the data on their behalf. Customers who have not previously used the ‘Bookshelf’ facility, or who do not wish to transfer their previous saved content, are not required to take any action. The simple process of arranging the ‘Bookshelf’ transfer will, of course, be fully documented with eServices providing all necessary technical support.

eBrary eBooks – Understanding the ‘Document unavailable’ message

LLR’s subscription to eBooks on the eBrary platform is to a virtual ‘collection’ of several tens of thousands of eBook titles. Like other ‘aggregator’ collections the subscription guarantees access to the collection as it changes and evolves over the course of the subscription rather than to a fixed list of guaranteed titles. As publisher agreements with eBrary change, new titles are routinely added to the collection and some existing titles are withdrawn from it.

Once a month, eBrary publishes a list of the titles that have been added to, and withdrawn from, the collection over the course of the previous four weeks – sometimes the changes affect less than a dozen titles in total; at other times the changes involve a hundred items or more (out of an overall collection of 30,000+ titles). As these lists of changes are published, the eServices team adds catalogue records for additions to the eBrary collection to ALEPH, and deletes catalogue records for withdrawn eBrary titles.

As these updated lists are only published monthly by eBrary, and then require processing and loading/deleting on ALEPH by LLR, there will sometimes be brief periods when there are some eBrary catalogue records on ALEPH for titles that have been withdrawn by eBrary. In these cases, clicking on the link in the Library Catalogue will produce a ‘Document unavailable’ message (see sample illustration below). There may also be new eBrary titles now available in the collection for which individual catalogue records have yet to be added to ALEPH.

If you encounter any examples where a ‘Document unavailable’ response to an eBrary catalogue record is proving particularly problematic for customers, please provide the eServices team with the details and we will arrange to suppress the appearance of that record in the catalogue pending confirmation from eBrary of the title’s withdrawal from the collection. That record will be removed from the catalogue during the next eBrary record update; and any new records will be added.

The 'Document Unavailable' prompt on the eBrary eBook platform