News & Announcements

The Libraries subscribes to a myriad of electronic resources for supporting the teaching, learning and research needs of the HKU community.

At present, user authentication via the library’s proxy server is required for off-campus access to licensed electronic resources, while on-campus users do not need to login because on-campus PCs are connected to the university campus network.

Over the past few years, however, excessive downloading and account abuse (http://www.lib.hku.hk/general/warning.html) have become more prevalent and are now a threat to the provision of information services to the university community.  Many of these activities have resulted in the immediate blocking of access to resources, inconveniencing the HKU community at large and consuming substantial staff time for investigation and rectification.

In view of the above, upon review and approval at the last Senate Library Committee Meeting, with effect from 2 September 2013, all on-campus users will need to login to licensed electronic resources with their HKU Portal UID/Library Card Number and PIN, just as they need to do when they are off-campus.  This will enable us to:

a)    Set up a monitoring system to stop excessive downloading before a block is triggered at the vendor’s end; and

b)    Trace on-campus violators more efficiently through the Libraries’ server directly

Please note that in general you will only need to login once when you start your browser session.

We hope that the change will mean fewer service interruptions and better service provision for the university community.

Peter Sidorko

University Librarian