All ebrary sites offer QuickView for viewing and using ebrary books online. Some sites also provide our older stand-alone reader, the Unity Reader. We always recommend using QuickView instead of the Unity Reader; we are phasing out the Unity Reader.
1. QuickView
- To open a book using QuickView, click on a book’s title or cover
- QuickView is the option we always recommend.
- No installation required
- Especially useful in situations where computers are in a locked-down state (e.g., shared lab or library computers)
- Browser-based
- Runs in just about any modern, full-featured browser that has JavaScript enabled
- Firefox is currently the browser we most recommend
- If you can use Google Maps “Street View”, then you have JavaScript enabled
- Runs on Macs, Windows, and Linux systems
- Many sites choose to only offer QuickView to avoid the installation issues common with the Unity Reader
2. Unity Reader
- To open a book using the Unity Reader, click on the “ebrary reader” button
- Requires installation
- Our Java-based reader
- Includes an accessibility feature offering basic text-to-speech functionality
- Runs on Macs, Windows, and Linux systems running Java 1.6 minimum
To open a document using QuickView, just click on the document’s title or cover.
We recommend QuickView over our stand-alone, installation-required readers (that you open by clicking the ‘ebrary reader’ button) because QuickView requires no installation (it’s browser based), it’s our most robust reader, and it’s the focus of our development efforts going forward.
Getting the most out of your QuickView view:
- Turn the page by double-clicking the right-side of the document page.
Turn to the previous page by double-clicking the left-side of the document.
This works on the iPad as well by double-tapping.
- Shrink or hide the Table of Contents (TOC) that appears to the right of the document by clicking on the very small black triangle over at the top-far-right of the TOC. Clicking on this triangle toggles between showing no TOC and showing a narrow TOC. To revert back to the full-size TOC, click on the icon almost directly above the triangle.
- Reduce the amount of stuff shown at the top of your browser by clicking on the very small black triangle over on the top-left of the screen (just to the left of the InfoTools button). Clicking on this triangle toggles between reducing and expanding the stuff shown at the top.
- Zoom in or out by clicking on the icon that looks like a page with a minus and plus sign next to it. Choosing a smaller zoom, say 75%, allows for more of the page to be seen, but at a smaller font. Increasing to 150% or even 200% makes the font bigger.
- If the ebrary window isn’t taking up the whole screen, resize the window just like you would any browser window.
Having trouble with the Unity Reader (that is, when you try to open an ebrary book by clicking on the “ebrary reader” button)? We recommend using QuickView instead (that is, click on a book’s cover or title to open it).
If you feel strongly about using the Unity Reader, here are some tips if you experience problems:
- Make sure you have the most recent version of Java, at least version 1.6
- Cookies need to be enabled
Error Code 102 usually means the Unity Reader was unable to connect to ebrary servers, here are some suggestions:
- reader.ebrary.com must not be blocked on ports 80 and 443
- This has been a common problem with sites that are using proxies
- Make a firewall exception for the Unity Reader
- Make sure you have write access to your home directory
- The Unity Reader does not require admin rights for installation but it creates personalized files for users in their home directory
- Occasionally, roaming profiles have resulted in issues with this
Error Code 30 issues or expired/invalid session errors:
- If you are using a proxy such as a Bluecoat or Squid Proxy, ensure the proxy server does not cache-control any content from ebrary.
If you are still having trouble, visit the following diagnostic sites and send the results to us.
http://site.ebrary.com/validate
http://www.ebrary.com/kb/users/java_diag.jsp
Our first recommendation is to use QuickView, but if you feel strongly about using one of our stand-alone readers, we recommend the Unity Reader over the old Plug-in Reader. And yes (even though our older documentation says it doesn’t) the Unity Reader DOES work on a Mac. Also, the Unity Reader works well with newer browser versions (for example, Firefox 4.0), but the old Plug-in Reader doesn’t.
All ebrary sites offer QuickView. However, not all sites offer one or both of our stand-alone readers. If your site offers the old Plug-in Reader but not the Unity Reader, you can contact your librarian and discuss it with them.
If you open a book in ebrary by clicking on its title or cover, search for text within the book as follows:
1. To the right of the text of the book, under the TOC tab, enter your search term(s) in the text field (the small rectangular box)
2. Click the “Search Document” button next to the text field
3. This will locate each occurrence of the search term(s) within the book
- If the “Highlight search terms” box is checked, it will highlight each instance
- A small magnifying-glass icon will appear in the TOC next to each chapter that contains the search term
- The “Rank” is an indication of how many times it is found in that chapter – the longer the bar, the more occurrences
4. You can click one of the magnifying glasses to go to the first occurrence of the search term(s) in that chapter
5. You can also use the magnifying-glass-arrow icons above the text of the book to skip to the next (or previous) occurrence of the search term
If you open a book in ebrary by clicking on the “ebrary reader” button, search for text within the book by using the “Search Document…” link under “InfoTools”.