[Web4lib] EBSCOhost Connection

[Mark Gooch]

As I have understood this service, your patron is on campus and
searching Google.  They come across a result that is in EBSCOhost, in a
database to which you subscribe. There should automatically be a link in
the entry that allows your user to access the article.  If the user
isn't automatically identified as coming from an IP at a subscribing
institution, they will see a link to locate a local library that
subscribes to the database.  It is sort of like the service you can set
up with Google Scholar to provide your patrons access to your electronic
journal subscriptions.  I'm not sure how this all works with off-campus,
proxy access.

Thanks
Mark

Mark D. Gooch
Technology & Government Information Librarian
The College of Wooster Libraries
1140 Beall Avenue
Wooster, Ohio 44691
Phone: 330/263-2522
FAX: 330/263-2253 
mgooch at wooster.edu
>>> Stacy Pober <stacy.pober at manhattan.edu> 08/29/06 7:11 PM >>>
Recently, I received an email from one of our consortial contacts that
provided a link to info about  "EBSCOhost Connection from EBSCO"
<http://support.ebsco.com/knowledge_base/detail.php?id=2716&t=h>

If I understand this new service - and I'm not sure I do - search engine
users
will be able to get EBSCOhost citations in their results, and will be
shown
a link of "Connect to Your Library".

[skipping some steps]

Then, if our library has opted into this service, our users
can get access to the article, if it's in one of our EBSCO databases.

Since we often see students searching with Google when they would be
better
served by looking in article databases, this sounds like it might be
useful.
However, the authentication appears to be a login/password via EBSCO,
and
our authentication method is IP filtering, with EZproxy used for
off-campus
authentication.

EBSCO offers libraries the option of redirecting the user a URL such as
our database list, but then they would have to search for the article

When I called EBSCOhost support to ask for details, the support
people had not yet heard of this service.  This was surprising, as their
database tech support tends to be right on top of things.

I'm still a little fuzzy on the limits of this service.

If users are able to search Google and have the content in our library's
EBSCO databases included in that search that sounds like a fine
thing.  Users would like having an additional way to search the
databases,
and we might see overall increased use of our resources, as well as
happier users.

OTOH, if *all* EBSCOhost content is now searchable via the web search
engines, this would include many databases we do not get.  That might
lead
to increased user dissatisfaction.

Has anyone used this service?  Do you like it? If you're using EZproxy,
how
have you handled the user authentication?

--
Stacy Pober
Information Alchemist
Manhattan College
O'Malley Library
Riverdale, NY 10471
stacy.pober at manhattan.edu

----------------------------------------------------------------
This message was sent using Manhattan College Webmail.
http://www.manhattan.edu


_______________________________________________
Web4lib mailing list
Web4lib at webjunction.org
http://lists.webjunction.org/web4lib/