ejournals, authentication, and the OPAC

[spober at manhattan.edu]

> From: "Barton Spencer" <jbspence at ocean.otr.usm.edu>
> 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 e-journals are not in our OPAC, but we've been using EZproxy (from
www.usefulutilities.com) to authenticate users.  It's a proxy server 
that works as a URL re-writer, which in practice means it does not have
to be set up at the user end.

The URL for the EZproxy server is embedded into the URL for the
e-journal (or other restricted resource) in the following manner:
Instead of a direct link to: 
http://vendor.com/journalurl.htm
It becomes:
http://www.ourproxyserver.edu/login?url=http://vendor.com/journalurl.htm

The proxy server looks at the incoming connection and only prompts 
for user authentication (in our case, the library barcode number) when
the user is coming in on a non-campus IP address.  

I particularly like this solution because the users don't have to 
do anything on their end to set up home access - if they have their 
barcode number handy, they're good to go.  EZproxy was simple to set
up and much less expensive than some other solutions I've seen offered.

The proxy server URL can be embedded into a OPAC URL just as easily as 
it can be put into a web page.  

Stacy Pober
Information Alchemist
Manhattan College Libraries
spober at manhattan.edu
raingoddess at juno.com