Try signing up directly from our signup page.
https://openlibrary.org/account/create
We are working on this but for now, if this happens, please start over again.
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There is a problem with how our signup page works with some browsers where once you get a "username taken" message, it doesn't clear up if you try again and you can't sign up. Try starting over at the beginning sign-up page
https://openlibrary.org/account/create
in order to clear the error and try again.
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Check your inbox and spam folder for an email from noreply@openlibrary.org with the subject line Welcome to Open Library The email should arrive within a few minutes but can sometimes take longer. If you can not find the email, contact us and we can resend the verification email.
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You can sign up to Open Library again with the proper email address or contact us with both the mistyped email address and the correct email address you would like to replace it with and we can make the change and send you a new verification email.
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Because the Open Library is a public wiki website, user accounts are retained in order to preserve public catalog edit history.
You can delete your Internet Archive account:
1. Go to Intenet Archive account settings page
2. Verify your Internet Archive password
3. Check the "Are you sure you want to delete your account?"
4. Click "Delete Account"
Careful: this process is irreversible.
You can also anonymize your Open Library account:
1. Go to your account page
2. Click "Edit" your Profile Page
3. Change your Display Name and click Save
If you need help deleting other identifiable information, please contact us and we'll be happy to help further.
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If you are using Internet Explorer 10 you may have to enable compatibility mode in order to use some of the functions of Open Library. Here is a link on Microsoft's site explaining how to enable compatibility mode. Here is a simple graphical explanation.
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There is a link to go to the Adobe website to sign up for an Adobe ID on the page asking you for a login. If you can not see that link or the page has disappeared, you can go to this page on the Adobe website and click the "Don't have an Adobe ID?" link to set one up.
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Adobe only allows registered users to copy purchased books from one device to another. Unfortunately they do not allow the same options for borrowed books.
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Books will automatically be returned to Open Library at the end of the two week loan period. If you are not sure what you have checked out, you can check your loans page.
This seems to be fixed by deactivating Adobe Digital Editions (via control-shift-d) and then restarting the application, then reactivating with your Adobe username and password, and then retrying. It seems to work if you borrow a different book, and may require time for the Archive's Adobe server to forget about the book that showed the problem in the first place.
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We are not totally certain why users are getting this error message but the
forums seem to think it's related to ADE 2.0. Please see this forum postingfor information on how to revert to an earlier version of ADE and contact us with more information if you are having this problem.Top
These errors mean your computer is not letting the .acsm file connect to the server to authenticate and deliver your book. They can happen for a number of different reasons. Here are some things to investigate.
Here is information from Adobe's help pages on ways to troubleshoot the error. Here is a page from Hoover Library that discusses how to clean out a previous download and start fresh.
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This post on the Adobe Forums discusses ways of fixing that problem.
Currently, books checked out via Overdrive Media Console can not be returned early. If you need to have a book returned to free up one of your loan slots, please contact us.
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Sometimes. To do this you have to return the book and check it out again; there is no other way to "swap" one format for another. Books checked out via Adobe Digital Editions can be returned early. Books checked out using other ebook readers cannot.
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While some of the items in Open Library are scanned by us, others are scanned by various other projects.
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This may happen when people have tried to read a book that is not available in BookBrowser format. Sometimes this happens by following a malformed link. Go to the book's record page (here is an example) and make sure there is an eBook version of the book available to borrow. You may also be accidentally trying to read a book that is only available to the print disabled. You can see this set of frequently asked questions for more about this program.
If you cannot view the book and you can't use the pull-down menu in the upper right corner under your username, you may have to turn on Compatibility mode in Internet Explorer. Here is more information about how to turn on Compatibility Mode.
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Sometimes the items in Open Library may have bad metadata. Usually this happens because we made a link between an Internet Archive item and an Open Library record and that linkage was incorrect. You can let us know when you find instances of this, or if you are confident that you understand the problem, you can remove the Open Library/Internet Archive link and fix the problem.
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When you type in an author's name in the author box, you must wait for a drop down menu to appear. Our database checks to see if we already have the author you've entered in our database. The list will contain authors with the same (or similar) name to the one you've typed in. Once the drop down appears, you must click on an author name, even if there is only one. If you do not click on an author name, none will be entered and the record, once saved, will list no author, only "author unknown."
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You cannot delete records. Click on the "Report A Problem" link at the bottom of any page and send us a message with the link or OL identifier. Please be very careful in suggesting deletions. We only want to delete works that are exactly duplicated elsewhere in Open Library.
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| January 18, 2025 | Edited by Tauriel063 | Edited without comment. |
| January 18, 2025 | Edited by Tauriel063 | Edited without comment. |
| January 18, 2025 | Edited by Tauriel063 | Edited without comment. |
| April 12, 2022 | Edited by Mek | update account deletion instructions |
| June 18, 2021 | Created by Drini | Create en page |