Access

Scholars Portal Books > Access

Accessing Scholars Portal Books Content

Screenshot of UOIT catalogue record with a link to the book on Scholars Portal Books.
Example from UOIT
Catalogue record from Guelph with links to access the book on Scholars Portal Books
Example from Guelph

Most content on Scholars Portal Books is access through a local library catalogue, which means you’ll only look at content your school has access to (rather than browsing everything available).

This means you should have already gone through your school’s proxy when you land on a book’s homepage, and should not need to authenticate to begin reading a book. If you’re off-campus and you haven’t used a proxy, select “Read this book” to see a list of subscribing schools and login links:

Off-campus access to this book is available for the following institutions. If your university is not on this list, it does not have full text access to this resource.

From the search results page, content you have access to will have a small Full Text icon:

Link to a book with "Full Text Available" highlighted in blue.

Borrowable Books

In order to borrow a book, you must have Adobe Digital Editions or a similar e-reading software on your device.

Follow these instructions:

Downloading Adobe Digital Editions

  1. Navigate to http://bit.ly/SPAdobe
  2. Select Download Adobe Digital Editions 3.0 (choose Windows or Mac)
  3. Open the downloaded .exe (Windows) or .dmg (Mac) file
  4. Open the Adobe Digital Editions 3.0 Installer
  5. Proceed through the installation steps
  6. Once Adobe Digital Editions opens, you will be prompted to authorize your computer by connecting it to an Adobe ID. If you don’t have an Adobe ID, you can create one now (it’s free).
    Adobe Digital Editions Window requesting authorization.
  7. Sign in using the eBook vendor ‘Adobe ID’ (this should be the default) and your Adobe credentials. You will receive a confirmation message, and be ready to borrow!
    Adobe Digital Editions window confirming that computer has been authorized.

Checking out a Borrowable eBook on Scholars Portal Books

The orange flag above a book’s cover image will say “Borrow this E‐Book” if the book needs to be checked out to be read:

Borrow this E-Book: Click here.

Look under the book’s cover image to see if it’s available to be checked out. If it is unavailable, you will see that date it’s due back:

Expected return date: 2014-02-06

Download and install Adobe Digital Editions and create an Adobe ID (see instructions above). Once you’ve done this, download your book by selecting the large blue button:

Download your book here

A file ending in the extension .acsm will download. This file should automatically open in Adobe Digital Editions, but if it doesn’t, right click and choose ‘Open with…’

Downloaded file called URLLink.acsm

Your book will open in Adobe Digital Editions. After 72 hours, it will be returned automatically. To return it early (so someone else can use it), right click on the book’s cover in your Adobe Digital Editions library and choose ‘Return borrowed item’.