[WEB4LIB] ejournals, authentication, and the OPAC

[Darryl Friesen]

> 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.

...

> 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?


I'm a fan of NOT linking from the OPAC to the ejournal.  That's not to say
that putting an 856 (or some other link) into the catalog is a bad idea; I
just think it should point to some intermediary page or CGI script.

Why?  A couple of reasons, not the least of which is ease of maintenance.
Let's say Ebsco changes the URLs for their journals.  Each ILS is probably
different, but I bet it's a huge undertaking to change all those 856 fields
in the catalog. Probably a lot more work than running an update query
against an SQL database, or using some sort of search and replace on an XML
file.

The second reason deals a little more with authentication.  We've found that
the easiest method (for us, maybe not the vendors ??) is IP authentication.
By linking from the catalog to some intermediary page/database we can not
only provide the patron with whatever additional information we have about
the journal, plus check the IP number, and provide instructions on using the
library's proxy server if they are coming from off campus (our proxy server
uses patron name and barcode for authentication).  If the ejournal requires
a username and password, that intermediary page/script could provide that to
the patron (assuming we can verify the person is indeed a patron).


- Darryl

 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
  Darryl Friesen, B.Sc.                        Darryl.Friesen at usask.ca
  Programmer/Analyst                            http://gollum.usask.ca/
  Consulting & Development, Computing Services
  University of Saskatchewan                   "The Truth Is Out There"
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------