Dear list members,

The “List membership” message from 4 February noted that it would be great to get an “industry perspective” on the issues and main concerns we’ve experienced involving alumni access to online resources. In this spirit, we’re glad to share a bit of JSTOR perspective, as well as inform list members that JSTOR has added referring URL as an authentication option for JSTOR Alumni Access.

As you may know, JSTOR launched Alumni Access in January, following a successful 3-year pilot. The program enables eligible Higher Ed institutions to provide their alumni with full access to the same set of archive collection content available to current students and faculty. 

A challenge for JSTOR has been how to best establish sustainable access methods for the new program. While we offered a variety of access methods during the pilot period, we initially concluded that new Alumni Access participants would be required to access JSTOR via IP based authentication methods. It was not without tremendous consideration that we took this approach. In order to sustainably scale access to thousands of eligible institutions and their alumni, we concluded that alternative access methods were too labor intensive and too insecure to remain viable options. 

However, after gathering valuable feedback from the community and based on broad interest and input, we have added referring URL as an authentication option for JSTOR Alumni Access. This authentication method will be available if institutions are unable to route alumni through a separate IP address that is unshared with current students and staff. If you have a restricted page on your alumni website with links to databases and other protected resources, then adding a referral URL is a possible access method. That said, please note that referring URL authentication poses challenges as well—we’ll be happy to work through these issues with you.

If you wish to explore whether referring URL authentication is possible for your institution’s alumni access, we typically only need the referring URL (i.e. the URL of the page on the library website that would contain the link to JSTOR, such as : http://www.universityalumni.edu/library/databases/).

To engage in a technical discovery conversation about referring URL or IP authentication for your institution, please contact JSTOR Support at [log in to unmask]

To learn more about the Alumni Access Program, including participation fees for your institution, please contact JSTOR Outreach & Participation at [log in to unmask] 

Best,

Brian Larsen
User Services Manager
JSTOR | Portico