Major incident

VitalSource: Service Disruption Impacting Bookshelf Online

Affected: Bookshelf Online

Current status of VitalSource: Operational — live VitalSource status

Timeline

1. Aug 26, 2026, 16:16 UTC
   investigating
   We are currently investigating an issue impacting Bookshelf Online.
2. Aug 26, 2026, 16:24 UTC
   monitoring
   A fix has been implemented and we are monitoring the results.
3. Aug 26, 2026, 16:25 UTC
   monitoring
   We are continuing to monitor for any further issues.
4. Aug 26, 2026, 16:30 UTC
   resolved
   This incident has been resolved.
5. Aug 26, 2026, 17:31 UTC
   postmortem
   On Tuesday, August 25, between approximately 1:50 PM and 2:00 PM ET, and again briefly around 2:45 PM ET, some users encountered errors, slow page loads, or difficulty opening books in Bookshelf Online. A similar disruption occurred on Wednesday, August 26, between approximately 12:06 PM and 12:17 PM ET. Some users also experienced intermittent sign-in problems during these windows. The cause was an internal service dependency that became unstable and stopped accepting new requests. Other parts of the platform, including course material delivery via LMS integrations and e-commerce, were not affected. We have identified the likely trigger for Wednesday's recurrence, are validating a fix, and have hardened this component against recurrence. We are monitoring closely through the remainder of the term start period.

Updates as published by VitalSource (original).