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.