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Re: Authorized Users Question
At FCLA, we authenticate users by either IP address or by patron ID for both our telnet and web services (see http://www.fcla.edu). We map the domains for the 10 universities in the Florida State University System. If there is a match, we pass the user through to the service, whether it be our own or one to which we gateway. If the IP address is not an SUS address, we ask the users to provide their patron IDs which we then authenticate through our circulation system patron files. We have the good fortune to be running a central system which contains the patron records for all SUS faculty, staff and students and can, thus, confirm that they are current, valid users. If there is a match, we can route the user to the service. In either case, we prefer to use the webscripting capability used by RLIN's Eureka and OCLC FirstSearch services (and also adopted by Cambridge Scientific Abstracts at our urging) so that we can route all our users through confidential, scripted logons unique to each university which enables us and the vendors to provide institution-specific usage data. For these services, the vendor trusts us to do all the user authentication and does no IP mapping itself. However, when a vendor isn't willing to adopt this method of access, we can only offer the service to on-campus users. As our universities move towards outsourcing their student IP services because of fiscal constraints and as more emphasis is placed on distance learning, more and more of our users are required to access their library services from non-university domains. An authentication process such as we provide is an absolute requirement for any of these services or a large segment of our user population will become disenfranchised. Remote access is now imperative. We are frustrated by services that have made the access process so difficult that easy scripting of logons is almost impossible. I won't name any names here, but some of you probably know a few of your own. --Michele Newberry ****************************************************************** Michele Newberry Assistant Director for Library Services 352/392-9020 Florida Center for Library Automation (FCLA) fax 352/392-9185 2002 NW 13th Street, Suite 320 http://www.fcla.edu Gainesville, FL 32609 fclmin@nervm.nerdc.ufl.edu ******************************************************************
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