Internal users, site licenses and identification

[Peter Graham, RUL]

From:  Peter Graham, Rutgers University Libraries

There's a significant issue here that I suspect more than one of us are
dealing with.  Some of the variables are:

1.  We in the libraries provide data bases under site license which may only
be provided to our community
2.  More and more it makes sense for computing/network operations to provide
access through ISVs rather than larger and larger (and slower) modem pools.
3.  We in the libraries want to assure anonymous access to data bases,
including particularly from within our buildings where we don't want to
require individual logins at library workstations (both for privacy and
practicality reasons).

The Emory solution does not easily allow Emory people who happen to be
offcampus to access a site-licensed data base, as I see it; yet this is an
important desideratum.  It is an issue we are facing here at Rutgers.  We
have a CWIS which provides (using WWW) links to a variety of data bases, some
open to the world and some not.  At the moment a kludge is being used to
allow only campus people to get to the licensed d.b.'s (they must have come
to the CWIS through an authenticated server).  We are being advised that this
kludge won't last very long.

Are there other practical solutions to this set of issues that have been
found?  --pg

Peter Graham    psgraham at gandalf.rutgers.edu    Rutgers University Libraries
169 College Ave., New Brunswick, NJ 08903   (908)445-5908; fax (908)445-5888
              <URL:http://aultnis.rutgers.edu/pghome.html>