[Web4lib] Proxifier bookmarklet -- too risky?

[Hankinson, Andrew]

Does your campus support VPN?  If your proxy server requires
authentication (which I would hope it does, otherwise you're giving the
internet access to your resources) AND you need to set up specific URLs
to work with it AND you need to post a page with the properly munged
links, it might be easier to simply ask that your faculty connect to a
VPN.  That way all of their links would work *almost* seamlessly. 

(I know with some VPN clients you can have it connect automatically if
it detects it's trying to access a certain domain - thus if a faculty
member tries to access "library.catawba.edu", the VPN could kick in and
connect them automatically.)

Just a thought.

-----Original Message-----
From: web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org
[mailto:web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org] On Behalf Of Keith D. Engwall
Sent: August 9, 2006 9:51 AM
To: web4lib
Subject: [Web4lib] Proxifier bookmarklet -- too risky?

I'm running into the notion of "Just because you *can* do it doesn't
mean you *should* do it", and I'd like to solicit some advice from the
community.
 
The faculty on our campus are starting to use persistent links from
research resources (EBSCOhost, etc.) to link to full-text articles.  One
of the challenges they've run into is that these links are *directly* to
the resource, and do not go through the library proxy server.  Thus,
when they are working from home, these persistent links do not work.
 
I've figured out how to create a "Proxifier" bookmarklet that will allow
them to enter the URL for the persistent link (or any URL), and it will
prepend the proxy part of the URL and take them to the resource through
the proxy.
 
Now, our proxy (EZProxy) is set up to only work with specific URLs, so I
*think* this is safe, but there's a nagging voice at the back of my
brain that isn't so sure.
 
Any thoughts, opinions?  Is this foolhardy?
 
Thanks,
 
Keith
 
---------------------------------
Keith Engwall
Head of Library Systems and Technology
Catawba College
Salisbury, NC
kengwall at catawba.edu
 
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public
relations, for nature cannot be fooled." - Richard P. Feynman
 

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