VitalSource incident
Service Disruption Impacting Bookshelf Online
VitalSource experienced a major incident on August 26, 2026 affecting Bookshelf Online, lasting 14m. The incident has been resolved; the full update timeline is below.
Affected components
Update timeline
- investigating Aug 26, 2026, 04:16 PM UTC
We are currently investigating an issue impacting Bookshelf Online.
- monitoring Aug 26, 2026, 04:24 PM UTC
A fix has been implemented and we are monitoring the results.
- monitoring Aug 26, 2026, 04:25 PM UTC
We are continuing to monitor for any further issues.
- resolved Aug 26, 2026, 04:30 PM UTC
This incident has been resolved.
- postmortem Aug 26, 2026, 05:31 PM UTC
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.