Reminder about ProQuest eBook Central ezproxy issue

Kia ora koutou,

We have a long-standing problem with ProQuest eBook Central (and formerly EBL) that sometimes causes users to log into a generic UC Library account, and not their own individual accounts. This can cause problems with individual user settings (such as note-taking), and most obviously, the list of recently viewed titles will contain books that aren’t ones they’ve borrowed.

While we still don’t have a solution for this problem, this is just a reminder to be aware of this issue. In general, this can happen if someone has been logged into any ezproxied resource, and soon afterwards log into eBook Central in the same browser.

Solutions will depend on individual browser settings, but usually involves one of the following:

  1. Close the browser and reopen it to clear the ezproxy session, then log into eBook Central before any other resources. My tests showed this tended to work best with IE and Firefox (again, this may just be my individual browser settings).
  2. Clear your browser cookies and log into eBook Central before any other resources. Chrome seems to hold onto a cookie that will continue to log you into the same account until that cookie expires or is deleted. This is great if you’re being logged into your own account, but not so useful if you’re stuck in the generic one.
  3. Frequent users of eBook Central may choose to always use a separate browser for eBook Central.

Unfortunately, we’ve looked into a permanent solution for this several times in the past, but haven’t been successful (yet!).

Donna
Library eServices

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *