Secure Electronic Delivery - FileOpen

Inter Library Loan requests made for articles and chapters from books will now be supplied via SED (Secure Electronic Delivery).

Before submitting your first Inter-library Loan request you must check that you can open and read an SED document, your computer should have installed Adobe Reader 4 or above and the FileOpen plug-in.

SED document are sent via an email containing a link to a PDF of the article. For staff and students the link will be sent to your ncl email account.

They can be:

  • opened more than once but only on the computer it was first opened on
  • accessed for up to 30 days
  • printed only once

Any attempt to access the document on another computer will fail due to digital copyright restrictions.

All University cluster machine allow you to open SED documents.

If you are off campus it is recommended that you use Outlook Web Access rather than using RAS (Remote Application Service) for printing SEDs.

Opening an SED on your own PC

  • Go to http://fileopen.bl.uk and click on the link that says Click to download a FileOpen test document – this will display the FileOpen Delivery Page.
  • Your document should open automatically in a few seconds, but if it does not, click the link that is below that to download it manually.
  • If Internet Explorer applies security settings you may need to Download File from the options on the pop up bar at the top of the screen.
  • Once you allow the download click on Open, the file should display on the screen saying you have successfully opened the test document.

Unable to open the test document on a School or Departmental PC?

The most likely cause is that the Fileopen Plug-in is not installed on your machine. You will need to contact your IT administrator who should be able to install this for you.

Unable to open the test document on your own home PC or laptop?

Go to http://plugin.fileopen.com and download the plugin to your machine. Once you have downloaded the plug- in you can try the test document as described above.

Once you know that you can successfully open and view an SED document then you may submit your Inter Library Loan request.

If you have any queries regarding the service Robinson Library users please contact web-ill@ncl.ac.uk or phone 0191 222 7601.

Walton Library users please contact med-ill@ncl.ac.uk or phone 0191 222 7722.