Reference at Newman Library

Tag: Books24x7

Books24x7 Records Temporarily Removed from OneSearch

As of today, we’ve temporarily removed all records for Books24x7 from OneSearch. Since last semester, we’ve been working with the vendor on restoring access to this ebook collection. Previously, the link to Books24x7 in the OneSearch records included a note indicating the collection was temporarily unavailable. That message was often not seen by our users, so to prevent further confusion we decided to pull the records out of OneSearch until access is restored. There is some overlap among the Books24x7 collection with the O’Reilly and the Ebook Central collections, so many titles are still available on other platforms and still discoverable in OneSearch because of that overlapping availability.

Visitors to Our Library Are Not Able to Access Ebooks from Books24x7

UPDATE: Since I published this blog post, I realized that in fact only Baruch students and faculty can access ebooks from Books24x7. Both the links in the catalog and OneSearch to titles from Books24x7 and the link to Books24x7 on the A-Z databases page all require getting past our remote access login page (even when you are here on campus). This means that there is no way for visitors to access titles from Books24x7.

Below you’ll see the original blog post I wrote (I’ve since crossed out the text). I’m sorry for the confusion.

If someone from another CUNY college has a made a special trip to Baruch just to access an ebook from Books24x7, please make sure that they use the Books24x7 link on the A-Z databases page to get to that ebook instead of using a link to the ebook found in OneSearch or the library catalog.

If that visitor to our library tries to go to a Books24x7 title from a link found in a record in OneSearch or Books24x7, they will get the remote access login page even here on campus (and this page is, of course, something that visitors here have no way to get past). A few years ago, Books24x7 changed some technical settings on their end that required us to set up catalog and OneSearch access in this nutty way.

This odd access set up–the remote access login from catalog and OneSearch links even here on campus–is unique to Books24x7 titles; you won’t see it happen with ebooks from Ebrary, EBSCO, MyiLibrary, etc.

Books24x7 Does Not Work with OneSearch

If you have found an ebook from Books24x7 in OneSearch and try to view it online, you’ll be unable to open that ebook. There is not a problem, though, with connecting to these same books from within the library catalog or from the main Books24x7 page that is linked to on the Databases page. It’s also important to note that ebooks from other vendors can be found and accessed via OneSearch with no problem.

When you click the “View Online” tab for a Books24x7 title in OneSearch, you’ll first get our EZproxy login page (as expected). Then after you enter your credentials to get past our Baruch login, you get an error page from Books24x7 that says

You must log-in through your library.

If you already have, please check your browser’s Privacy settings to make sure cookies are being accepted.

Here’s what that error page looks like (note that it is embedded within the OneSearch page frame):

OneSearch--Books24x7 error page

I’ve got support tickets out with the CUNY Office of Library Services, Books24x7, and to OCLC (who provide the EZproxy software we use for authentication). As soon as this is fixed, I’ll post about it here.