Library

There are a number of error messages you might encounter when trying to connect to our databases from off-campus.

When Logging In

These messages will appear after you enter your information on the Library Proxy login page.

"We were unable to authenticate you"

This means that you entered either your barcode or PIN incorrectly.

"Requires group membership lacked by the current user"

This means that our licensing agreement for this database does not allow off-campus access to your user group.  

Our license agreements typically cover current Carleton students, faculty and staff.  Alumni and other user groups only have access to a subset of our databases.

"You are not authorized for access to this database"

This means that there's a reason why you in particular do not have access to the database:

• You are not registered for this term, or have not completed registration.  The license agreements that we sign only provide access for currently-registered students, or currently-employed faculty and staff.  There are more stringent restrictions for the statistical databases.
• You very recently registered or obtained a new Campus Card.  Your information may not have been transferred to the library system yet.  Contact the Circulation Desk to manually update your status.
• You reported your Campus Card as lost or stolen.  We block such accounts to prevent abuse.  Just get a new Campus Card.
• You completed your studies at Carleton.  The license agreements that we sign specify that access is only for currently-registered students, or currently-employed faculty and staff.  If you graduated, you may wish to obtain an Alumni card.  We are continually working on obtaining greater database for our alumni.
• You are a Carleton affiliated researcher and trying access one of the statistical databases. Our licensing agreements for statistical databases are quite stringent. Contact the Maps, Data, and Government Documents Centre for more information.

Please note that almost all our databases are accessible from within the library without needing to login.

After Logging In

If you login successfully and see an error message similar to:

To allow /connect?session 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 somehost.com

The EZproxy server must then be restarted to make this change take effect.

Please fill out the Connection Problems form and provide details about how you got to the database.