[WEB4LIB] WEB4LIB digest 1547

[Monica King]

hi greg and all,

first, my thanks to andrew mutch for his credit to me for my development of 
an authentication method that is simple and (hopefully) easy to maintain for 
system librarians such as yourself.

i discussed this concept earlier this month with karen schneider who is 
including some of the information i am about to tell you here in her 
upcoming column in american libraries.

after trying to develop a method for several years that was independent of 
the information aggregators and automation vendors,  i came up with a method 
that i decided to patent for several reasons.  first, after numerous trial 
and errors, the process i currently use works very well for not only my 
library's needs, but for other libraries that i 've worked with in solving 
the authentication problem. and since the u.s.p.t.o. has begun allowing 
internet-related inventions to be patented, i thought "why not?" (regardless 
of how tim berners-lee feels about such patents,  i think they actually help 
not hinder the online industry. and they are the only way for a small 
inventor to protect his/her intellectual property.)  secondly, while many 
library vendors do provide authentication methods (generally based on 
proxy-servers) they are costly.  or it is difficult to even determine the 
cost of their authentication service since pricing is built into another 
product.  and finally as well as most importantly, after sitting on a panel 
of colleagues discussing this very topic at ALA this year, i realized that 
is librarians themselves who often have the best solutions to our problems.  
i know it may be unrealistic to believe that little librarians can compete 
with the corporate giants, but i am eternally (yet not foolishly) optimistic 
about the pool of talented people working as library professionals.

so here's my attempt to jump into the fray with the big boys, 
http://remoteauthentication.com
at the bottom of the home page there is a link to the script I gave to 
andrew mutch (and others) that you are welcome to copy, edit and use. good 
luck.

monica king

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