Accessing Scholars Portal Books Content


Most of the time you’ll be linking to books on Scholars Portal Books through your library catalogue, which means you’ll only look at content your school has access to (rather than browsing everything available).
This means that if you’re not on-campus you should have already gone through your school’s off-campus access login when you land on a book, and you can go straight into reading. If you’re off-campus and not logged in, you’ll see a list of subscribing schools and login links:
Make sure to check off “Books you can read because your library owns them” when doing a search.
Single-User Books
Some books are limited to one user at a time. If you try to access the book while someone else is reading it, you’ll get a message asking you to check back later.
If you don’t scroll or interact with the book for 15 minutes, it will be made available to other users.
You also have the option of “borrowing” these books for three days and reading them offline in Adobe Digital Editions or similar e-reading software.
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
- Navigate to http://bit.ly/SPAdobe
- Select Download Adobe Digital Editions 3.0 (choose Windows or Mac)
- Open the downloaded .exe (Windows) or .dmg (Mac) file
- Open the Adobe Digital Editions 3.0 Installer
- Proceed through the installation steps
- 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).
- 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!
Checking out a Borrowable eBook on Scholars Portal Books
If you land on a borrowable ebook, you will see a button in the left sidebar labelled “Read this book offline in Adobe Digital Editions.” Click this button to open the Adobe Digital Editions menu.
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 red button labelled “Download the Adobe Digital Editions File.”
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…’
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’.