ejournals, authentication, and the OPAC

[Barton Spencer]

Hi all,

We've been struggling with the question of how to show the public
which journals we provide electronically, full-text. There are
many single titles and even more titles that we get via
EBSCOHost, SilverPlatter, and other aggregators.

After much discussion we are thinking that placing the records in
our OPAC may be the best way to go, rather than creating a
separate database that we could publish to the web. There will be
URLs in the MARC records so that the patron can go straight to
the ejournal or to the aggregator that provides it. However, once
this idea gained approval, the question of authentication (for
off-campus users) raised its head. (by the way, we have a new
Sirsi Unicorn system)

My multi-part question is:
Are others of you experiencing success in downloading records
from an aggregator, such as EBSCOHost, and loading them into your
OPAC? (In our case, we are talking about 13,000 or so titles from
several aggregators)

Also, what is your model for authenticating off-campus users when
they look at a MARC record for an electronically-available
journal in your OPAC and click on the link? What method do you
use to determine that they are valid users?

We think that we currently have ways to make all of this work,
but I am quite interested to hear your experiences. If some of my
questions aren't clear (they are hard to phrase in an email)
please let me know and I'll try to elaborate.

Thanks in advance,

Barton Spencer
Assistant to the Dean of Libraries
The University of Southern Mississippi
barton.spencer at usm.edu