Technical Support and Off Campus Access

Accessing the Electronic Resources

Are you attempting to access the electronic resources from on-campus or off-campus? If you are trying to access the databases or journals from off-campus, you will first want to sign into CentralSearch to verify that you are a part of the CCSU community; and therefore, permitted to use the databases and journals paid for by CCSU.

Off Campus Access Instructions

To access library resources from off campus, you will first want to log into CentralSearch from the library homepage. There is a link about the middle of the way down that says “Sign In/Check Library Account”. Follow the instructions when prompted to login using your CCSU provided email address and password combination as your login credentials. For step-by-step instructions and a visual guide for logging into to CentralSearch please see “How to get off-campus access”.

The browser and its version can impact results

• Have you recently upgraded your browser or is there a firewall in place? Firewalls can be a problem for those attempting to access the library resources from an office computer for which a company or business may have installed a firewall.
• Does the resource you are connecting to support your browser? Sometimes another browser will work better.
• Does the resource require cookies to be turned on? Change settings to allow cookies.
• Are pop-ups blocked? Many resources require pop-up screens.
  How to: IE or Firefox or Chrome or Safari*
• Try emptying your browser's cache.
  How to: IE or Firefox or Chrome or Safari
• Is JavaScript enabled?

*These instructions are for blocking pop-ups; however, most of the same steps can be used to temporarily allow pop-ups.

This information has been borrowed and adapted from the LibGuide Troubleshooting Electronic Resources by the Hirsh Health Sciences Library at Tufts University. 

When you log into CentralSearch from off-campus to use the library-provided subscription databases, you are accessing library resources via a proxy server. A proxy server allows verified users of the college community to access restricted resources (i.e. resources paid for by the library) from anywhere in the world.

Below is the verbiage for some common proxy server errors. Please report these messages so that they can be corrected. Proxy server changes need 24 hours to update:

​“404 “Page not Found”

"Failure, unrecognized title" 

"To allow /login?url=http://www.NEWURL.com/ to work, your EZproxy administrator must first authorize this within the ezproxy.cfg file.
Within this database's section of the file, the following line must be added:
    Host www.NEWURL.com
The EZproxy server must then be restarted to make this change take effect."

To report an error message for a database or journal please provide as much information as possible on the online form to report a technical issue.

Begin in the right place

You will want to access the resource using the Elihu Burritt Library website. If you are off campus and try to access databases via browser favorites or bookmarks, you will not be routed to the proxy server and access will be denied.  You should see this screen when off-site so you can log in.

Publisher problems

Sometimes the publisher may be having hardware/software problems. Usually publishers will notify the libraries if there are extended problems; an advisory warning can then be posted to the affected resource, which displays in the catalog or on this LibGuide in the box "Database Status Report".

Date ranges

Are you trying to get to the full text of something outside the correct range of years? For example, are you trying to open a PDF to a 1994 issue on a journal when the library's access begins in 1995? Check the catalog for the dates. If the date is incorrect in the catalog, please report it.

PDFs

PDF won't open? Make sure you have the Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on the machine you are using. Also, take note of the size of the file. Some documents can be too large. Save the file to your hard drive, and then try opening it.

This information has been borrowed and adapted from the LibGuide Troubleshooting Electronic Resources by the Hirsh Health Sciences Library at Tufts University.