Eresources are databases of scholarly and other specialized content purchased or subscribed to by institutions and companies to support the work of their members. The University subscribes to a range of journals, ebooks and other collections from different providers and publishers to assist the learning, teaching and research activities of our staff and students. See our Collections Policy. Access is via the My Learning / Learning Support or Student page in the portal.

The Library should always be your first port of call for book and online information resources. 

Check Publication Finder to see whether have the journal or ebook you are looking for.

What is authentication?

Authentication is a way to verify that users are entitled to access the paid for content of a database or resource provided by a publisher or service provider. There are different types of authentication for different groups of users. The university is part of the UK Higher Education or UK Federation which uses Shibboleth/OpenAthens. Most of our resources are compatible with Shibboleth/OpenAthens.

How does it work?

Once you select the link to a resource from the university portal, behind the scenes our system communicates with the service provider or publisher. Usually you are required to select the name of the university from a list of institutions. Depending on the resource you may also have to re-enter your computer ID and password on the university portal login screen.

On vs. Off Campus

Access to eresources is more seamless when you are logging in from a university PC as you are connecting from an authorised location. When you are off campus you are usually required to select the name of the university from a list of institutions.

Single sign-on via the portal

The university uses single sign-on which means that you need to enter your computer ID and password to log into the portal to access eresources while authenticating. Terminology differs across resources so when signing in you may be required to select any of the following:

Sign in, Log in, Login via your institution, Institutional login, academic login, Institutional access, Federated login.

Look out for the institutional/OpenAthens/Shibboleth login option. Sometimes you will have to select the UK Access Management Federation or UK Higher Education grouping first before selecting the university from a List of UK institutions. 

Never enter your portal login anywhere other than the university portal or the OpenAthens login screen.

For more information on eresources, see https://libguides.gre.ac.uk/eresources

The Library has purchased over 137,000 electronic books (ebooks) available for students and staff to read (and in some cases to download) online via different publisher platforms. Over 13,650 titles are available in the Ebook Central platform and over 2,000 in VleBooks. Additional titles have been purchased in EBSCO, Cambridge Core, and SAGE Knowledge platforms. The main formats used are ePub, PDF and HTML for viewing and ACSM digital rights management format for downloading. 

How to find ebooks

You can search for our ebooks in LibrarySearch in the portal and via the separate eresource platforms. Use Publication Finder in LibrarySearch to search for ebooks by title or ISBN.

Ebooks are also accessible via the University portal from the Online databases and academic journals link in the My Learning/Learning Support page.

Off campus access

To successfully access titles when connecting off campus you should navigate to them from individual databases in the portal e.g. Ebook Central, EBSCO eBooks, VleBooks rather than from LibrarySearch or from links in Moodle.

When connecting off campus (or from a wireless connected laptop within the University), you may need to sign in via an institutional access login page where you will need to select the University name from a list of institutions first.

For more information on ebooks, see https://libguides.gre.ac.uk/ebooks.