ACLS HEB

As of August 1, 2018, the ACLS Humanities Ebook Collection (ACLS HEB) is hosted on the Fulcrum platform. To view the collection, visit fulcrum.org/heb. Please contact aclsheb-info@umich.edu with any issues.

Access and Browser Requirements

Books may be accessed directly from links in the MARC records that have been loaded into the catalog of a subscribing institution. These records contain stable URLs that represent the most reliable way to reach the material at our site. If a subscribing institution has an access system that requires that URLs be rewritten, such as for proxy service, statistics tabulation, etc., that institution will need to make those local modifications to the URLs as system access requires.

If you experience any browser compatibility issues, you may want to try downloading an updated browser from one of the following sites:

OpenURL Compliance

ACLS HEB is OpenURL compliant on the title level, but not on the chapter and page level. In order to offer the most stable link to an individual title, you may use the title-specific handle, which can be found in the book’s catalog record, and the format for which matches the following example:

http://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.01234.0001.001

You may also use the Citable Link on the title record page of each book at https://fulcrum.org/heb, located beneath the Subject. The format matches this example:

https://hdl.handle.net/2027/fulcrum.kk91fm144

The Citable Link may be used to link to a title in the ACLS HEB collection on syllabi and course packs or on learning management systems such as Blackboard, Moodle, Canvas and D2L.

ADA Compliance and Accessibility

All ACLS HEB titles are presented in EPUB3 or PDF format with varying levels of accessibility enrichment. Most of our backlist titles are scanned from physical copies provided by the publisher, which have been processed with optical character recognition (OCR) software but not corrected. This may be made apparent by screen readers, search results, and text snippets that reveal errors in the OCR. More details about the accessibility of the collection and the platform are available at this link:  https://www.fulcrum.org/accessibility/. From that page:

The Fulcrum platform aims to meet WCAG 2.1 AA Standards in both the platform and its content by providing infrastructure and resources to support accessible books, image descriptions, transcripts for audio, captions for video, and alternative formats for digitized content.

The extent to which Fulcrums meets WCAG 2.0 and Section 508 of the U.S. Rehabilitation Act is reported in Fulcrum’s Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT®) Version 2.3 INT.

If you have any further questions, please email aclsheb-info@umich.edu.

MARC Records

Fulcrum distributes MARC records via the a number of Knowledge Base products. See the table under 'Discoverability / Delivery Services' for details.

Subscribers can also download MARC records directly, free of charge, from https://ftp.fulcrum.org/HEB/MARC/. The file 'heb.mrc' contains the cumulative set of MARC records for all titles that are currently live in the collection. This file is the best option for making sure you have the most up-to-date set of records. We also make available incremental update files for those who prefer only to load records that have been added or corrected since the previous round. In this case, just download the load the files named 'heb_update_YYYY-MM-DD.mrc', substituting YYYY-MM-DD with the all dates that follow the last time you loaded records for HEB.

PLEASE NOTE: The records are MARC21, USMARC records, in Unicode UTF-8 format. There is a discrepancy between the number of records and the number of books in the collection due to the fact that multi-volume sets share a single record. Every effort has been made to bring these records up to current national standards.

MARC records are provided “as is.” Some options for MARC editing tools can be found on the Library of Congress’s website: http://www.loc.gov/marc/marctools.html. One free program, MarcEdit, can be downloaded here: http://marcedit.reeset.net/downloads.

Subscribers may share the ACLS HEB bibliographic records and metadata with third-party, not-for-profit databases as well as other service developers and providers working to make this data more broadly accessible as long as the records are not being resold by any party.

Records for all ACLS HEB titles, complete with OCLC IDs, are also disseminated via WorldCat, and are available as a separate WorldCat Collection set.

MARC records for ACLS HEB are licensed for reuse under a CC0 license (https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/cc0/).

Titles/MARC Records Removed

Libraries can download a list of removed titles (including removal dates) here.

Downloading, Reading, and Printing Content

Since most material on this site is licensed for online electronic distribution only, this means that users are restricted to printing a chapter or chapters for personal research use. If, as an instructor, you want to use material in a course, you can provide the Citable Link permanent URL on the title record page. If you want to photocopy a chapter for your course, you must apply directly to the original publisher or copyright holder for permission. If in doubt, or for further information, see our section on fair use.

To download a chapter, go to the chapter/section headings listed under the “Table of Contents” tab. The “Read” button will take you into the e-reader; clicking on the “Download” button generates a PDF of the chapter.

Do not distribute the download link — ACLS HEB titles can be accessed by subscribers in a variety of ways, which impacts the URL generated.

A chapter may be downloaded or printed at a time. This is generally sufficient for following a citation or extracting a quotation and follows ACLS HEB’s policy for fair-use rights and limitations.

Please note, ACLS HEB’s XML titles on Fulcrum currently do not support chapter downloads. 

Discoverability / Delivery Services

ACLS Humanities Ebook has entered into a number of agreements to make the collection more discoverable and to enable auto-loading of MARC records. Our agreements should get HEB indexed in the services listed on the table below. Search for collection title 'ACLS Humanities Ebook', though please note that we do not have complete control over the way each service displays our collection information and we have seen variations.

VendorProduct TypeProduct Name
EBSCODiscoveryEBSCO Discovery Service

Knowledge BaseHoldings & Linking Manager (HLM)
OCLCKnowledge BaseCollection Manager

Knowledge BaseWorldCat

Knowledge BaseWorldShare
ProQuest / Ex LibrisDiscoveryPrimo (Central Discovery Index)

DiscoverySummon (Central Discovery Index)

Knowledge Base360 (Client Center, Intota)

Knowledge BaseAlma Community Zone

Knowledge BaseSFX



Usage Statistics (Stats)

Institutional subscribers can access their stats for our new platform, Fulcrum, at https://fulcrum.org/counter_reportsThis requires no login; it uses IP authentication to identify the requesting institution. You may need to alter the previous link to a proxied URL in order to be IP-authenticated to the reporting system.

ACLS HEB stats are COUNTER 5 compliant. The COUNTER 5 standard is markedly different from COUNTER 4. The biggest difference comes in the way the reports count the number of hits. Your stats look different because the new COUNTER 5 standard shows use in a very different way and Fulcrum provides readers with a more modern way of reading which doesn’t rely on individual page views in a page turner.

IMPORTANT: Several reports are available, but for details on title usage ACLS HEB subscribers should draw on the Title Master Report with the total item requests metric. For general platform usage, subscribers should draw on the Platform Master Report using the total item investigations metric. For details on chapter downloads, subscribers should draw on the Item Master Report using the total item requests metric.

*We strongly encourage you to consult the resources below for more information:

The Friendly Guide to Release 5 for Librarians

Glossary of COUNTER terms

COUNTER website

Quick Reference COUNTER 5 guide


Proxy Server Configuration

If your campus uses a proxy server, it generally needs to be configured with the host names and/or domains of our servers. Questions? Email aclsheb-info@umich.edu.

New Fulcrum Configurations

T Fulcrum
https://www.fulcrum.org/
HJ doi.org
HJ https://doi.org
HJ hdl.handle.net
HJ https://hdl.handle.net/
HJ www.humanitiesebook.org
HJ https://www.humanitiesebook.org
HJ humanitiesebook.org
HJ https://humanitiesebook.org
HJ www.fulcrum.org
HJ https://www.fulcrum.org
HJ fulcrum.org
HJ https://fulcrum.org/
DJ fulcrum.org
Find id="permalink" aria-label="citable link" value="https://
Replace id="permalink" aria-label="citable link" value="https://^A

  

However, there are circumstances in which you may want to add a more nuanced configuration.

If you’re currently using RedirectSafe or NeverProxy for handle.net, then add the following near the top of your config file:

AnonymousURL +https://hdl.handle.net/*
AnonymousURL +http://hdl.handle.net/*
AnonymousURL +https://handle.net/*
AnonymousURL +http://handle.net/*

… and add this line to the end of the Fulcrum stanza:

AnonymousURL -*

Similarly, the following lines should be added near the top of your config file instead of using RedirectSafe or NeverProxy for doi.org or dx.doi.org:

AnonymousURL +https://dx.doi.org/*
AnonymousURL +http://dx.doi.org/*
AnonymousURL +https://doi.org/*
AnonymousURL +http://doi.org/*

This would also require the presence of the following line to the end of the Fulcrum stanza:

AnonymousURL -*


For the proxy service to take effect, users at your campus or institution need to access the service via a connection through the proxy server, not directly. Your proxy server administrator can provide you with a proper URL for linking to our service; ensure that your users are entering via that URL.

Please note that throttle settings in your configuration may have a negative impact on your members' use of large files on Fulcrum. 

IP Address Updates

If you would like to add an IP address to your authorized range (or remove one), please send us your update request by contacting aclsheb-info@umich.edu, and the data will be forwarded to our technical support team. We will send a confirmation when the update has been made. Please note there is no separate log-in allowing subscribers to independently enter updates.

The University of Michigan campus backbone, on which Fulcrum is hosted, does not support IPv6 at this time. Please continue to send us your IPv4 ranges for basic authentication.

Common Access Problems

If you are unable to resolve a Handle URL from our MARC records (e.g. https://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.05823), you will need to add the domain 'hdl.handle.net' to your firewall's allow list.

Shibboleth / OpenAthens / SSO

Fulcrum supports access for your institution's members through federated Single Sign-On technologies such as Shibboleth or OpenAthens. Fulcrum is a member of InCommon and participates in eduGAIN.  Allowing your members to access ACLS HEB via your Shibboleth / OpenAthens Identity Provider requires the following:

  1. Your institution must have a SAML-based Identity Provider (IdP) whose metadata we can consume via a stable URL and which defines a security domain using shibMD:scope. This is most commonly achieved through membership to an identity federation that participates in eduGAIN.  The following federations have been confirmed to support access to Fulcrum via eduGAIN as of November 2019:
    • Canadian Access Federation (CAF)
    • HEAnet / Edugate
    • InCommon
    • UK Federation
  2. Your Identity Provider must be configured to release attribute 'eduPersonScopedAffiliation' to entityId 'https://fulcrum.org/sp' and to release the value 'member' when applicable. For more details on configuring your SSO to work with Fulcrum (ACS endpoints), please find our metadata in the eduGAIN aggregate metadata XML.
  3. You must provide us with the entityId of your Identity Provider.

This information can be included in your order form or emailed to fulcrum-info@umich.edu.

A Fulcrum logo is available at https://www.fulcrum.org/img/fulcrum-logo-shibboleth.png

Please note that Fulcrum is not a member of OpenAthens Federation. You must participate in another identity federation to take advantage of SSO integration. 

WAYFless URLs

If you have Shibboleth/SSO access set up, the Handle URLs in the MARC records can be modified to create WAYFless URLs. This will allow your patrons to authenticate at your institutional portal without encountering a login prompt on Fulcrum. If the patron already has an active session with your institution's Identity Provider, then their access will be seamless.

To make an HEB URL into a WAYFless URL, append the following:

?urlappend=%3fentityID=[your institution's entityID]

For example, a WAYFless version of https://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb00967 for the University of Michigan would be:

https://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb00967?urlappend=%3fentityID=https://shibboleth.umich.edu/idp/shibboleth


While we try to avoid Handles that resolve to Fulcrum URLs that contain query parameters (e.g. "?locale=en"), if such an exception occurs, the WAYFless URL syntax above will result in an error. In these cases, please append the following instead:

?urlappend=%26entityID=[your institution's entityID]


To create a WAYFless link to the collection as a whole:

https://www.fulcrum.org/heb?entityID=[your institution's entityID]

Privacy and Data Collection

The University of Michigan Library, which hosts the ACLS HEB collection, may collect some data about your institution’s use of ACLS HEB in order to improve services and to integrate with university teaching and learning initiatives. It is committed to protecting the privacy and confidentiality of user data in compliance with federal and state laws and professional standards. Follow this link to read the university’s Library Privacy Statement, which governs Michigan Publishing’s hosting of ACLS HEB.