Tips for Occasional ProQuest Dissertation Download Issues:
A few people at ITP have had problems downloading dissertations from the ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database. This seems to be more of a problem for large (>10 MB) dissertations. These problems have all been from computers off campus, mostly on Mac computers.
This is the information we have gathered:
The dissertation starts to download slowly, but stops before the download can be completed. The Internet connection is “high speed.” The dissertation can easily be downloaded from a computer (PC or Mac) on campus.
Possible solutions for both Mac and PC:
• Clear your cache.
• The download could be “timing out” before downloading completely.
• It could be a computer memory problem. If too many programs are open while attempting to download, there may not be enough available memory for a large PDF.
• The problem could have to do with antivirus/firewall software on the individual computer.
If nothing else works, it is possible for us to e-mail the dissertation from a library computer, as an attachment. Since it is usually quite large we first divide it into several parts, best kept to 4MB or smaller.
For assistance with this or other library research problems or questions e-mail the library: refdesk@itp.edu
