Rationale and scope: 

• This document provides best practices for writing support tickets and troubleshooting electronic resources. It also consolidates some of the excellent documentation covering these areas that has already been written by SILS, CDL, and Ex Libris.

• ERES recognizes that there is an opportunity to illuminate the extensive e-resource infrastructure to the wider SILS community. In writing this document, ERES considered the fact that the audience for this documentation would not be limited to the current ERES membership. One purpose of this document is to share information about troubleshooting e-resources to multiple audiences, including colleagues working with e-resources who need a refresher on writing tickets and troubleshooting e-resources, new colleagues being onboarded to working with e-resources, and colleagues who may not currently work directly with e-resources but wonder what happens to e-resource problems after they are reported. As a result, this document provides transparency on our current best practices. These practices may also provide support to campuses in the event that any e-resources experts are unavailable to submit tickets or troubleshoot issues.

• The scope of this document is not intended to be exhaustive. This document does not cover steps involved in troubleshooting aspects such as the Central Discovery Index (CDI), proxy servers, or OpenURL linking. It does not cover fundamentals of e-resources and does not include a glossary of e-resources terms. ERES suggests consulting vendor or system-specific documentation whenever possible, such as the Ex Libris documentation on the CDI or Electronic Resource Management, if an issue is not addressed in this document. This document seeks to illuminate the interaction of CDL and individual campuses within the e-resource ecosystem. While CDI issues affect e-resources, for the purposes of this document these types of issues may be considered problems with systems and metadata that need to be reported to Ex Libris, rather than access issues that CDL or a campus can fix.

How to report problems with Alma/Primo and e-resources

• To report a local or Systemwide issue with Alma or Primo, follow the steps at SILS Operations Center - Report an Alma / Primo VE Problem.

  • ERES follows up on open tickets as a regular agenda item.

  • Be sure to loop in your SILS Operations Team representative for systemwide issues.

• To report an issue to CDL regarding a Systemwide licensed e-resource, use CDL Helpline. Follow the steps at Report a Problem .

• To report an issue with a locally licensed and managed e-resource, follow local campus practices for reporting issues (see a general troubleshooting workflow below).

What information to include when writing a ticket:

• If submitting a ticket to ExLibris Support, consider including information such as:

  • description of problem behavior (include expected behavior vs actual behavior) or question; 

  • scope (who is affected), 

  • impact (severity) and urgency (timeline for resolution/deadlines) related to the problem; 

  • conditions and steps for replication; 

  • other details or important items for Support to be aware of, such as recent changes that may be related, troubleshooting steps already taken, etc.

  • See ExLibris Knowledge Article

• If submitting a ticket using CDL Helpline, include as much information as possible in the description such as:

  • Title, 

  • your contact information (which is filled in automatically under “Requester” after you log in), 

  • Type of Problem, 

  • Description of the problem, 

  • ISSN/ISBN, 

  • Vendor Name, 

  • Database, 

  • Access Point. 

  • Additionally, you can attach a file, such as a screen shot, via the Attachment feature (optional).

  • See Helpline Knowledge Base

• When troubleshooting e-resources, consider the type of problem you are encountering :

  • Access problems: access problems to any/all parts of the resource.

  • Content problems: missing content, broken links or PDFs, etc.

  • Vendor site problems: when you cannot access the vendor’s site at all.

  • Misc/other: other vendor problems.

• Document and provide as much detail as possible in the ticket:

  • Describe the steps you took to reach the issue

    • Consider using Zoom to record a video showing your user journey from start to finish

  • Provide a screenshot of a site showing your IP address and browser settings, operating system, etc., by visiting a site such as http://supportdetails.net

  • Provide a screenshot of the error and provide any text of the error 

  • Describe the method of authentication used (e.g. VPN, Wi-Fi, Proxy)

Best practices and tips for troubleshooting e-resources

How to detect a problem (link)

• Look for the inability to access the online full text of a licensed title. Common signs include:

  • You are prompted for a Username and Password

  • A message indicates that “your subscription has expired,” or “you do not have an electronic subscription for this resource”

  • No full text option (button or icon) is provided or you are prompted to purchase the article

  • A database, such as PubMed, has a link to the article, but the article is not available on the publisher’s website. 

Initial e-resources troubleshooting tips

• If a URL does not work and you need more information about the resource, try using the Wayback Machine to access a previous version of the website.

• Restart your computer, clear your browser’s cookies and cache; try accessing the site in an incognito window/private browsing window

• Can you replicate the issue (does it reoccur in different browsers/machines)?

• If submitting a ticket or contacting support, consider providing as much information initially in a single email to reduce delays and back and forth with the publisher or agent. For example, provide the information above, including your campus IP addresses, screenshots, and details of any invoice history.

• Compare the experience of accessing a licensed product from an authorized IP to the experience of accessing the product from an IP address not on file with the vendor. This might help you determine what authenticated access is supposed to look like (provided the access is not broken). 

General workflow for troubleshooting locally managed e-resources (see also CDL’s Guides and FAQs covering troubleshooting issues with e-journals and DOIs)

1. Learn of the access problem from a patron or colleague.

2. Test access on your computer and connection.

3. Determine whether the issue applies to a CDL-managed resource or a locally managed resource.

   1. Check Alma for an activated portfolio in the IZ (locally managed) or NZ (CDL-managed).

   2. Consult the license terms in Alma (if available) and any purchase order lines (if available) to determine the vendor, campus availability, and payment information.

4. If access works for you, but not for patron, follow up as needed to confirm any additional details regarding the problem

   1. Confirm access details with patron (IP address; VPN; proxy) and patron’s computer settings (browser, operating system, etc.)

5. If access does not work for you, determine whether the website recognizes you as a UC user or not (this can help establish whether the issue is related to entitlements in which the publisher needs to activate access entirely, or if the publisher needs to update IP ranges)

6. Seek one of many possible resolutions:

   1. Determine whether there is an IPv6 conflict. Try disabling IPv6, visiting a site such as https://test-ipv6.com/ , and following up with the vendor about IPv6 support

   2. For CDL-managed resources, submit a ticket to CDL Helpline (see above)

   3. For locally managed resources:

      1. Investigate whether you should have access to the e-resource

      2. Contact the publisher with the above details or submit a claim to your subscription agent to restore access

      3. Confirm the resource is not a “Tier 4” resource (e.g. limited to the Law School)

      4. Activate resource in Alma and send to Cataloging if needed

      5. Update the portfolio in Alma if a link is broken

      6. Update portfolio coverage in Alma if incorrect

      7. Delete portfolio and record in Alma if the link is erroneous and there is no access

Additional General Troubleshooting Resources

Emery, Jill, Graham Stone, and Peter McCracken. Techniques for Electronic Resource Management : TERMS and the Transition to Open. Chicago: ALA Editions, 2020. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/ulib_fac/301/ .

Talbott, Holly and Ashley Zmau. The Electronic Resources Troubleshooting Guide. Chicago: ALA Editions, 2020.

Zmau, Ashley and Holly Talbott. “The Current Landscape of Electronic Resources Access Issues.” Library Technology Reports 58, no. 7 (October 2022). https://doi.org/10.5860/ltr.58n7 .