- Off campus access
- Printing difficulties
- Readability of documents
- Access for students with vision impairment
Off campus access using a commcerial ISP
Access to online CMD resources is exactly the same as accessing the Library's databases. Information Technology Services Department provides the QUT Secure Access Services as a secure way for staff and students to connect to QUT's IT services using an external Internet Service Provider (e.g. Telstra, Optus etc.) or from other universities. More information about QUT Secure Access Service.
For help with problems accessing any library resources from off campus, please contact the IT Help Desk.
Printing difficulties
All CMD items greater than 3mb are split into multiple documents for easier downloading. If experiencing difficulties when attempting to print PDF documents from Science Direct and Emerald databases using Adobe Reader 6 it is recommended that you save the document and then print from this file.
Readability of documents
While, the best possible scan is added to the CMD item, the quality of the hard copy document directly impacts the quality of the scanned document. For this reason, if CMD items are scanned from older resources or microfilm, the scan quality may be of a lesser quality. If this is the case, you can check to see if the Library holds the original document.
Documents are saved as TIFF images when scanned, and are then submitted through Adobe Acrobat Capture software, converting the TIFF images to PDF format. While this process allows the benefit of the smaller file size, the conversion may result in some variations from the original. When adding documents to the CMD, each page is checked for readability and editing is performed where feasible. However, it is not possible to edit some variations from the original, in particular, those resulting from conversion of italics and certain fonts.
Some documents may appear blurry on screen, but will print more clearly. If you are viewing a document that is difficult to read, it is recommended that you print a single page in order to compare the print quality of the document to the screen quality.
Access for students with vision impairment
The Library attempts to make readings in the CMD available in a format accessible for students with a disability. Unfortunately, it is not always possible to convert all of the content in scanned documents to a text format suitable for use with screen readers.
If you have difficulty accessing a CMD document for this reason, please ask at the Library Help Desk or contact us via the Ask a Librarian service for assistance with obtaining the document in an alternative format.
Is there any mechanism available for printing material in a magnified form?
PDF is a page based format, so the only way to magnify a printout is to increase the page size. This will depend on having access to a printer with larger paper sizes available. If you print to A3 paper it will double the size of the text.
It is technically feasible to cut and paste the text into another application and alter the font size in that application, however you should be aware that this practice may contravene copyright regulations if used for more than insubstantial portions of the whole item, unless you are doing it to assist readers with impaired vision.