Proquest Ebook Central - back to normal

Ebooks from Ebook Central seem to be back to normal following yesterday's issues. 

Please let us know if you have any further problems.

Proquest Ebook Central problem

We are currently having an issue accessing ebooks on the Proquest Ebook Central platform. We are urgently investigating this.

Ebook Central problems update (“Sorry, your institution does not allow access to ProQuest Ebook Central from your current IP address”)

ProQuest have not completely solved this problem, but they have come up with a fix.

If you see the error “Sorry, your institution does not allow access to ProQuest Ebook Central from your current IP address”, it is because of a specific cookie on your device. If you go to https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/clearcookie/clearcookie.html, you can clear this cookie and should be able to proceed normally.

Ebook Central - “Sorry, your institution does not allow access to ProQuest Ebook Central from your current IP address.”

We are getting reports of users seeing this error message when trying to access ebooks from Ebook Central

We are waiting for ProQuest to fix this, in the meantime they suggest 

1. Clear your web browser history, cache and cookies
2. Try an incognito web browser window
3. Try an alternative web browser

 

Network upgrade 21st-23rd March affecting all campuses and library systems

What is ICT doing?  

 

We are upgrading the core networking equipment at the Luton campus.

 

Why are we doing this?  

 

As part of the ICT infrastructure investment programme, it is necessary to have service downtime to allow for essential upgrade work to take place. 

 

When will this be?  

 

Downtime: Friday, 21 March 2025, from 17:00 – 23:00

Downtime: Saturday 22 March 2025, from 8:00 - 23:00

At risk day : Sunday 23 March 2025 - all day until 17:00

 

What will be affected? 

 

All University ICT services and Internet access will be unavailable during the downtime period for staff and students on-site at all campuses.

• No Internet access on campus 
• No Office 365 / Emails / Teams service from onsite computers
• No Access to applications hosted on site - this means that
• the library catalogue, self-issue and return machines will be unavailable
• login to DISCOVER and other digital library resources including ebooks, ejournals and databases will also be affected

 

Applications hosted off-site (e.g. Email, BREO) will be accessible off site only.

Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) for library services

University of Bedfordshire has been using Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) for some systems such as BREO and email for some time, and now this is being extended to more systems including those used for access to library services.

 

Starting 7th January 2025, the following applications will require MFA when logging in:

 

Library services:

 

• DISCOVER
• Ejournals
• Databases
• Ebooks
• book reservations and renewals 

 

Careers:

 

• Handshake

What you need to do

• To access these applications after MFA is enabled, you must log in using your University of Bedfordshire email address.
• If you haven’t set up MFA yet, please follow the instructions in the MFA guide for students. 

 

Need help?

If you experience any issues with MFA or require assistance, please contact the Student Information Desk (SID) 

POSTPONED - IT systems essential maintenance Saturday 5th and Sunday 6th August - disrupted access to Digital Library

Please be advised that this planned work has been postponed and will be rescheduled in due course (4/8/2023)

The university is planning IT maintenance on Saturday 5th and Sunday 6th August. During this time, only Office 365, email and Microsoft Teams will run as usual - all other systems will be affected. This includes BREO, DISCOVER, and access to digital library resources such as ebooks and ejournals. 

What are ICT doing?
We are upgrading networking equipment in our core server and storage infrastructure. This will require a weekend shutdown of University hosted systems.

When will this be?
Downtime: Saturday 5th August 2023 all day from 8:00am
At risk: Sunday 6th August 2023 all day until 5:00 pm

Downloading ebooks - software required

We understand some students have been struggling to read downloaded ebooks because they do not have the right software on their device.

You do in fact need specific software if you want to download a library ebook rather than read the book online. This is because publishers apply Digital Rights Management to their ebook files to protect against licence infringement (eg copying more than the licence allows) and to expire the book after the download period comes to an end. 

There are notes on our library catalogue records to that effect: 

for VLEbooks: 

System requirements: Adobe Digital Editions is required for viewing the full text of downloaded ebooks on PCs and laptops. This can be downloaded from VLeBooks after clicking on help, if not installed already. An Adobe ID is required to read VLeBooks on either an Android or Apple iOS phone or tablet. The VLeBooks eBook reader app can then be installed from the Apple App store and the Play Store app.

for Proquest ebooks: 

System requirements: Adobe Digital Editions or Bluefire is required for viewing the full text of downloaded ebooks on PCs / laptops, Apple IOS or Android devices. They can be downloaded from Ebook Central. An Adobe ID is required.

Those are are our two main ebook providers, we do have others which will have their own requirements but in general Adobe Digital Editions is likely to be required. This software is free to download here https://www.adobe.com/uk/solutions/ebook/digital-editions/download.html. 

If you have installed Adobe Digital Editions but still have problems opening an ebook file, please contact us.

Problems logging in to email, MyBedsLife and library resources

We are having issues with several IT systems this morning which has been affecting login to email, MyBedsLife and many of our library resources including reading lists and ebooks. DISCOVER is affected but there is an alterative link here - you will be able to search but not see any saved folders etc,

Login to library resources problem fixed

This morning's problem with logging into DISCOVER, ebooks and other library resources is now fixed. 

Please let us know if you continue to have any issues.

Problem with login to library resources - DISCOVER, ebooks, RefWorks, reading lists, etc

We are currently having a problem with access to all resources using UK Access Management Federation login - this includes DISCOVER, ebooks, RefWorks, reading lists and other resources.

We are seeking help to get this fixed urgently. There is alternative accesss to DISCOVER here, which will allow you to search but not to access any personalised folders. 

Problem with login to library resources - DISCOVER, ebooks, RefWorks, reading lists, etc

We are currently having a problem with access to all resources using UK Access Management Federation login - this includes DISCOVER, ebooks, RefWorks, reading lists and other resources. 

We are seeking help to get this fixed urgently. 

ProQuest Ebook Central downtime Saturday 26th June

Due to scheduled maintenance, ProQuest Ebook Central will be unavailable on Saturday 26 June 2021 10:00 am - 6:00 pm EDT. This will affect all of our ebooks with ebookcentral.proquest.com in the URL

Problem accessing library resources fixed

 Login to library resources such as DISCOVER and ebooks is now back to normal.

Please let us know if you have any further problems.

Problem accessing library resources

We are having an system issue this morning affecting access to DISCOVER, ebooks and other library resources. 

Please bear with us as we work to get this fixed.

Dawsonera ebooks - provider change

If you are using Dawsonera ebooks you may see a warning notice like this:

This is because the company providing the service has gone into administration and ceased trading. Do not worry though, our Dawsonera ebooks are going to be migrating to another of our providers, VLEbooks. 

We do not yet have a date for this migration but we hope to have no break in service. 

You do not have to do anything, as we will manage changing the links from reading lists, the library catalogue and DISCOVER. 

You may however lose access to any notes you had saved to the Dawsonera platform itself. 

We will post more information as it becomes available. 

ProQuest Ebook Central downtime 27th June : 5:00pm - 8:00pm

ProQuest have warned us they will be performing maintenance on the Ebook Central platform on 27th June, 5:00pm - 8:00pm. Proquest ebooks will be unavailable during this period. This will affect ebooks with ebookcentral.proquest.com in the URL.

"Your connection is not secure" errors

We have had reports of this error message when accessing ebooks.

We do not currently know what is causing it - if you get this error please let us know at library.technical@beds.ac.uk what resource you were trying to access and what browser you were using.

In the meantime we suggest you try using a different browser to try accessing the resource.

ProQuest Ebook Central downtime 21st December 2am-12pm

ProQuest are going to be doing some maintenance on their Ebook Central platform from 2am to 12pm on 21st December. Ebooks with http://ebookcentral.proquest.com in the URL will be unavailable during this time.

Dawsonera ebooks downtime Saturday 5th October 9.45 pm - Sunday 6th October 8am

We are expecting downtime for Dawsonera ebooks overnight from 9.45 pm on Saturday 5th October to 8 am on Sunday.

This will only affect ebooks with dawsonera.com in the URL.