Difficulties accessing some journals and web-resources

Some journals and other e-resources are accessible to everyone. Some are accessible to everyone on-site but are restricted to some Raven account holders off-site.

When you are onsite you should be able to access the journals. If you are using a laptop you should still be able to access the journals if you are a current staff or student and are using eduroam.

The rest of this document describes what to do if you cannot access a Raven restricted journal when you are not onsite.

All members of the department should have a Raven account. Offical Academic Visitors may apply for a Raven account.

A common issue people report is they cannot access a certain journal or e-resource.

Cannot access journal or e-resource

  • Check if there is a problem with your Raven account. Use the Raven test page at http://www.cam.ac.uk/cs/raven/test/ and follow the instructions. If the test fails the problem is with your Raven account.

    If you need a new Raven password see http://www.cam.ac.uk/cs/docs/faq/n5.html

    If you are unsure how to proceed email help@maths

  • If there is no problem with your Raven account and you cannot access something on the DAMTP website, check you are on the departmental raven list. (People with unix accounts automatically are, visitors who only have Raven accounts may not be). Email help@maths to ask if you are in this group.

  • If there is no problem with your Raven account and you are trying to access a journal or other library eresource, check if you are eligible to use these resources: http://www.cam.ac.uk/cs/raven/test/eresources-testpage.html

    If this shows as a 'fail' then you cannot access e-resources from outside. If you are:

    • A member of the department - contact us help@maths.cam.ac.uk
    • An official academic visitor - either
      • email the library helpdesk via lib-raven@lists.cam.ac.uk to explain you are a visiting scholar who requires off campus access to library eresources. (Pre-requisite: You must have a Raven account).
      • or tunnel in (see below).
    • Otherwise, contact us (help@maths).

Tunnelling

This describes setting up your web-broswser so that it gives the outside world the impression that it is inside the department.

For this you will need: A DAMTP unix account also known as a DAMTP Desktop account.

To connect there are two steps involved.

  • Set your web-browser "Socks" setting. On Safari this may be under Safari -> Preferences -> Advanced -> Proxies, on Firefox try searching under Preferences -> Advanced -> Network -> Connection -> Settings. For Socks Host use localhost and for the Port (box beside host field for Safari) enter the number 1080.

  • Now open an ssh connection to DAMTP with the following ssh -D 1080 username@host.damtp.cam.ac.uk

There are further instructions on this at our pages about connecting to DAMTP from outside.