What are browsers cache and cookies and how, or why, do I delete them?

Answer

It is good practice to periodically delete or empty your browsers cache and cookies. Clearing your browser’s cache and cookies means that website settings (like usernames and passwords) will be deleted. If your browser starts to run slowly or you are getting error messages you should probably clear both. Also, if there are errors with the library databases or the library website, you will be asked to delete your cache and/or cookies.

What is a cookie?

The purpose of the cookie is to help the website keep track of your visits and activity. A website might use cookies to keep a record of your most recent visit or to record your login information. Many people find this useful so that they can store passwords on commonly used sites, or simply so they know what they have visited or downloaded in the past.

What is a cache?

A cache is hardware or software that is used to store something, usually data, temporarily in a computing environment, so that future requests for that data can be served faster. Every time you visit a website, files (images, code etc) get stored on your pc belonging to that website so that the next time you visit it loads faster. The cache stores a copy of visited pages and then uses that copy to open when you re-visit that page.

Sometimes your browser might be set to delete the cache and cookies on exit, but most people do not manually set this, so the cache needs to be manually emptied. The following links so you how to delete them:

Please note:

ATU Library's website uses cookies. We do not use this data to track individual visitors, but to gain a general impression of the number of visitors to the website, the pages most frequently visited, the kind of search requests, etc. These cookies enable us to monitor visitor statistics via Google Analytics, Google’s web analysis service. With this information we are then able to make improvements to our website where necessary.