[WEB4LIB] ejournals, authentication, and the OPAC

[Donald Barclay]

Barton Spenser asks some good questions. The authoritative answers to these
questions are not yet within our grasp, but I will gladly tell you how we do
it at my shop.


My library has a two pronged approch. We catalog our ejournals in the OPAC
and we have an alphabetical list of ejournals on our website
(http://www.library.tmc.edu/ejournals.html). The alpha list has more titles
than are in the OPAC because the list includes free ejournals that are not
catalogged. We are planning to make the alpha list (which is generated from
a Microsoft Access file) searchable some time in the future.

>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)

We haven't downloaded records from an aggregator. In fact, our experience
with our major aggregator (who shall remain nameless)  has not been good.
When it comes to ejournals, the aggregator tends to send us a list of
journals we <<should>>have access to and leave all the details of access to
us and the epublishers. These details are not insignificant, and ironing
them out takes pretty near one FTE.

>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?

Our preferred method is IP authentication. Note that a significant number of
epublishers require passwords instead of, or in addition to, IP
authentication, so don't plan on having everything work seamlessly.

For our cardholders who are not coming from one of our institutional IP
ranges, we have a remote access option. Right now, remote access involves
dialing up a library modem, but in January 2000 we are switching to a
proxy-server system that allows users to access directly from the web. You
can get some idea of how it works (and will work) by visiting:
http://txhi.library.tmc.edu/rasweb/rasweb2.htm.

Donald A. Barclay
Houston Academy of Medicine-       always the beautiful answer
Texas Medical Center Library           who asks the more beautiful question
donaldb at library.tmc.edu                                   -- e. e. cummings

-----Original Message-----
From: Barton Spencer <jbspence at ocean.otr.usm.edu>
To: Multiple recipients of list <web4lib at webjunction.org>
Date: Wednesday, December 15, 1999 8:42 AM
Subject: [WEB4LIB] ejournals, authentication, and the OPAC


>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
>
>
>