InDesign CS4 Library- can't get library items on to pages

Question

I'm fairly new to InDesign CS4.
A book I'm reading has a tutorial telling me to drag library items from the library to a page.
This is a library that the book author created that came with the book.
However, I can't get material from the library to any of the pages.
Anytime I try dragging any of the images or other items from the library to my page in InDesign CS4, I get a small "No" symbol (a circle with a slash through it).
So I clicked on the image in the library that I wanted to add to the page, and using both the content menu (and later, the library panel's menu) to select "Place Item," nothing happened.
How do I get content in a library on to a page?
Dragging and using "Place Item" are not working for me.

Answer 1

Hello, Lee Sarah, and thanks for answering.
If I understand you correctly, this is what I did:
I "right" clicked on the Library file icon on my hard drive, called "Healthy Pets CS4."
This brought up a context menu.
From there, I went to "Properties."
Under "Properties" > "Attributes," "Read only" is not checked off, nor is "hidden" checked off.
In the "Healthy Pets CS4 Properties" dialog box, I then clicked on the the "Security" tab, which brought up all sorts of stuff about permissions, read /write,  etc.
I guess I should mention at this point that I'm on a computer running Windows Vista, since this might be pertinent to my issue (?)
Although it's my computer, it has me on here as two different people (I'm on as Administrator and under my first name, which let's just say is "Graphics Cuddly Bear.")
On the "Security" tab page of the dialog box is a heading called "Group or user names," and from there, depending on which name you pick from the user names, different options get high lighted in the ""Permissions for Authenticated Users" box below it.
So, under "Permissions for Authenticated Users" (when the users "Autheticated Users" and "Admins" are selected) the following are checked off with a check mark,
(as if to say, "These are the things you have permissions to do with this file"):
Modify
Read and Execute
Read
Write
The only things I do not have permissions for when I check off  "Administrator" on that list is "Special Permissions."
When AU (Autheticated Users) is checked it says I do not have "Full Control" or "Special Permissions."
However, when I clicked on my name (GCB - "Graphics Cuddly Bear") under the heading of "Group of user names," these two things are the only ones checked off:
Read and Execute
Read
So I went in to another area of this box and gave my account ("GCB") the "Write" ability.
When I went back to the box, a check mark next to "Write" then appeared. So it appears to be telling me that under GCB, I can now write to that file.
So when I opened and closed out of InDesign and re-opened it, it still will not allow me to drag the files/text/images from the library.
I still get the little "No" symbol.
It also still will not let me use the "place" command, either.
I've gone ahead and worked thorugh this chapter without being able to use the author's library items, but it makes working on her tutorials very difficult.
And it's rather pointless, since the entire chapter is about how to use the software's library.  
I got a response from the book's publisher (Delmar / Cengage) to ask them for help, if they would provide me with working copies of the files, or some other work around, and they were NOT the least bit helpful.
A representative from Delmar/ Cengage e-mailed me to say that because I purchased the book at Amazon's site (rather than from them directly) that they would not help me, which I thought was cruddy and not classy.
I don't see that it entirely matters where I bought the book from; they're the ones who made it.