ok maybe i'm just being a dumbass. I'm getting textbooks off of z-library per the megathread, as they are the only site that lists the specific books I need currently. I am browsing via TOR.

I can't seem to see a download button or link for the books I am looking for, nor for any other book I open. Maybe this is because I don't have an account. But let's say I don't feel like making one, because that means spinning up another burner email, and and and.... idk. I'm lazy.

I thought I'd be nice and access the content via the IPFS CID using the IPFS desktop node/app thing from here. Zlibrary lists IPFS CID's for all books they host. That will save server load on them and likely be faster for a couple of the 200+MB PDF's.
But it absolutely can NOT find any of the CID's that z-library gives for any of it's content, whether I click browse or inspect in the search box or use the import function, even after I let it sit and run on my extra seed PC for two days to populate the peer list.

I know IPFS must be working as some of the test CID's I used from the tutorial imported ok.

am i being dumb? am I missing the fundamental purpose of the IPFS CID's here or something?