I mentioned to a publisher rep the other day that it would probably by quite easy for them to help off-campus users authenticate to their site if they provided some support for EZproxy through their admin site. At present users will pick up EZproxy authentication if they start at our site, but if they start at Google, Pubmed or the publisher's own TOC alerts the user is unauthenticated and has to rely on the WAYF and Shibboleth (or library-provided tools like LibX to invoke EZproxy). Publisher's could use the WAYF to invoke access via EZproxy too, if libraries could configure this through admin.
One conclusion that came out of the recent UC&R Yorks & Humberside discovery services event in Huddersfield was that EZproxy makes life really simple in a discovery environment. Ease of discovery -> ease of access -> high usage -> renewals / impact.
See http://bigblackbucket.blogspot.com/2011/05/publishers-please-provide-ezproxy.html for more...
Terry
Terry Bucknell
Electronic Resources Manager
Sydney Jones Library
PO Box 123 Chatham Street
Liverpool, L69 3DA, UK
T: +44 (0)151 794 2692
F: +44 (0)151 794 2681
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