Cheers for your thoughts. I suspect the UK public library authority I would have to appeal to would have zero motivation to help with SSH access, unfortunately.

Cheers for your thoughts. I suspect the UK public library authority I would have to appeal to would have zero motivation to help with SSH access, unfortunately. I imagine it has been blocked for a specific reason, probably some previous or expected abuse, as you've both mentioned. The SSH over SSL solutions others have pointed out may do the trick for now.