eBook Collections Usage Guide: Basic Setup

Updates and Applications

Using the Marriott Library's ebook collections is fairly easy, but there are some basic steps you should take to ensure your computer or mobile device is ready:

• Install the latest stable version (not a beta) of any major web browser. Modern mobile devices will usually have a good built-in browser, and as long as you keep your device up to date it should work fine. For computers, a few reliable options for browsers are,  Safari (Mac only), Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox.

• Make sure you have some sort of PDF application installed. Most of the downloadable ebooks we have are in PDF format, and there are a few options for reading those files. Adobe Acrobat Reader is a good choice for a free and reliable PDF reader, though there are many other PDF programs available (see Useful Software). Modern mobile devices will usually have native support for reading PDFs.

• If you will be downloading DRM-protected ebook files for offline use, you will need to install either Adobe Digital Editions (Windows or Mac) or Bluefire Reader (Android or iOS). See Downloading and DRM and Useful Software for more information about downloading DRM-protected ebooks from our collections.

• Install the latest updates for your operating system. While not strictly necessary to use our collections, this is generally a good idea.

Those few steps should be enough for most people to use our collections without any problems. If you have done all of the above and you encounter problems when trying to read or access an ebook, please see Troubleshooting for help and additional information.

Authentication

If you want to use the library's ebook collections, you need to either be on the campus network (UConnect) or authenticated with our proxy server. The websites that host our ebook collections check to see where people are connecting from, and you need to be on campus to use them. The proxy server is a server on campus that you connect to remotely that routes your connections through our system so that you appear to be on campus even if you are not. Generally, if you do not appear to be on campus you will be asked for your uNID and password when you try to access a database, after which you will be routed through the proxy and be able to use the ebooks. This is the easiest way to access ebooks from off-campus, and does not require any special setup beforehand. If you wish to setup an alternative connection to the proxy server, see Troubleshooting for more information.