Accessing GPC Electronic Resources from the Workplace

This is an ongoing problem with no attractive solutions, but I thought it might be good to have it documented as questions come up about it every now and again.

If a patron cannot access databases from off-campus, for whatever reason, you can just refer them to me. However, if it's after hours, or you'd like to do a little preliminary troubleshooting, the very first question you should ask them is if they are at their home or their office. If they "can't pull up" GPC electronic resources, i.e. they just see a blank screen or some sort of screen saying that their browser was unable to access the site, donuts to dollars they are in their office. And here's why I'm so sure of this.

If they can't pull up any GPC-provided electronic resources, but they can still get into the GALILEO-provided stuff, it’s highly likely that this is an issue with their company's firewall. As previously mentioned, we're running off-campus access to our electronic resources through EZproxy for authentication purposes. Ezproxy runs on a non-standard port, and corporate firewalls usually block the traffic on this port. If the patron can speak to their IT department about it, tell them that they need to be able to do web logins on 2443. (Understandably, most people don't want to talk to their IT department about not being able to do homework from the office.) There's not really anything else we can do on our end, but they should be able to access the electronic resources from home with no problems.

Of course, if they are pressed for time and can't wait until they get home, you can always offer to email them the articles they need. Our vendors might be a little iffy about this kind of usage, but if the patron has logged into EZproxy, which they must have to discover that they couldn't access the resources, it seems obvious that they're an authorized user.

Now, we can configure EZproxy to run on a more standard port, but I suspect it wasn't done in the beginning because it was felt that this would cause more trouble than it would solve. If we have it configured on the standard port, I can't add resources to EZproxy without getting the network folks at OIT involved, which means putting in a ticket. As great as those guys are, they couldn't do what they needed to on their end nearly as fast as I can handle things on my end with the current configuration. Basically, the current configuration gives me a lot more freedom to work with EZproxy independently, and the other configuration would add extra steps and layers every time we add or remove a resource.

However, if you all feel strongly that the corporate firewall thing is a more serious problem than I'm seeing on my end, please let me know. I'm certainly open to trying a new configuration if everyone thinks it is best for our patrons.

Accessing Permalinks from Off-Campus

Hi all! Hope everyone had a good T-Day. I've gotten an excellent question from Amy B. and I thought that you all might be interested in the answer.

One of her students was having trouble accessing EBSCOhost permalinks from off-campus and emailed asking for the EBSCOhost password.

We don't have an individual student login for EBSCOhost, or any of our other databases. We use proxy software called EZproxy to authenticate our students from off-campus, and GALILEO has proxy software as well.

Some GALILEO databases will automatically append a proxy referral URL to permalinks. (EBSCO is one of them, so I still haven't figured out how this student got an unproxied permalink.) This proxy referral URL will allow the user to be authenticated when clicking on the link. (It might ask them for the GALILEO password. I'm on-campus right now, so I can't test that.)

Here's what a proxied permalink from Academic Search Complete looks like. The section in bold is the proxy referral URL. That "dek1" represents GPC.

http://proxygsu-dek1.galileo.usg.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=5507063&site=ehost-live

If the URL just said something like this ...

http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=5507063&site=ehost-live

... then it isn't proxied, and patrons wouldn't be able to use it smoothly from off-campus.

Databases that we subscribe to outside of GALILEO are still proxied, but the proxy referral URL looks a little different.

http://ezproxy.gpc.edu:2048/login?url=http://www.artstor.org

But how does it all actually work, you say? Well, that's a great question. Here it is in a nutshell.

When you are off-campus, you are outside of our IP range. The IP range is how the databases recognize you as an authorized user, e.g. paying customer. If you're using a permalink without a proxy referral URL, the databases don't know that you are an authorized user and they don't let you in. The good news is, this is very easy to remedy.

If you open a permalink and get some message about not being logged in, open another browser window and log into EZproxy. You can do this by going to our list of databases (http://www.gpc.edu/library/articles.htm), clicking on any one of them, and entering your GPC login and password on the screen provided. Then, open your permalink and it should work just fine.

Remember, that EZproxy operates by placing a cookie on your PC. So, if you have your browser set to delete cookies when you close the browser window, you'll need to leave a window open at all times or you'll be logged out of EZproxy. If this happens, you can always log back in.

I have a webpage set up that offers some more details about off-campus database access, if you'd like to take a look. (http://www.gpc.edu/library/ezproxy.html)

That's the basic gist of it, but if you have any further questions, please let me know. Also, please feel free to copy and paste this post into an email, cannibalize it for a LibGuide, whatever you need to do with it.