Registering with Wiley/encyclopedias

["Hamaker, Chuck" <cahamake@email.uncc.edu>]

We purchased from one of our standard book vendors Wiley's Encyclopedia of
Electrical and Electronics Engineering a rather expensive purchase! With
the purchase of the set, Wiley offered "free" for a year access to the
"online" version, whatever that might mean. So far through repeated phone
calls, we have been totally unable to register our institution or any
workstations for this "free" access.

The form for Online Account Activation came with the product and basically
sends you to the Web site <http://www.wiley.com/eeee/activate>, gives you
a password (a 17 digit number with ample opportunity for error in
reproducing) to use. The registration form asks you pertinent information
like billing address, contact, etc. You are asked to provide the name of
the vendor supplying the product and invoice number (if not Wiley). The
Standard License Agreement is also at the web site, and you have to
indicate compliance with that to go on. The IP address is the sticking
problem because they demand Class C network addresses, and give you a
limited number of those which would never suffice for this campus, and
barely so for the Library alone. While we do have a few pc's in the
Library "hard-wired" to individuals, we generally assign only Class B IP's
on campus. I have tried to explain to three different people that the
152.15.xx.xxx address is limited to this campus, has no remote locations,
not even dormitories, etc. I actually had one temporary person at Wiley
call me back to see what I wanted (again) and promise she would get to
someone in the technical area who would know. I emailed the techhelp
address on the web site. I'm taking a break right now. The ignorance of
the Wiley personnel doesn't seem to be as much of a problem as the
incredibly stupid concept under which the company is operating in this
matter of dual print/ electronic product offerings.

This is NOT the way to become well known for electronic reference
material, and given that Wiley is still advertising the "electronic"
access with the set, problematic from an advertising perspective.

We would LIKE to put the connect address or at least the information that
this is available in our OPAC record for the set (preferrably with a live
button for our in house users to be able to go to this directly).

Our collection development librarian, who has spent a great deal of time
trying to get us registered for this access, has just about given up
hoping that Wiley will notice they have a problem, or have someone contact
us who can solve it.

Has anyone on the list successfully registered for this or similar Wiley
add-ons??
 
chuck Hamaker
Unc charlotte