> Personally I am fan of always forcing a login and not using
> IP at all as it is the reality of the situation - these are
> subscription resources and therefore a login should be an
> established step. Afterall, students seem to cope with
> logging in to Facebook everyday without it being a real
> problem :-) I know that I would probably be stoned by lots
> of people for that opinion though!
I'm not going to stone you, but ...
If this really worked on a practical level I'd have no problem with getting people to login. The truth is that many many people have difficulty successfully logging into the electronic resources provided by their institution. Just this week someone related an email (not from an OU student) which stated they had been so frustrated by this experience they simply weren't going to use the electronic resources anymore.
The problems caused by login procedures don't just waste time, but also have a considerable impact on how students and staff view the library (or IT) as a service - it causes disappointment and disgruntlement (what a great word).
I'd argue that Facebook is an unfair comparison, but that aside you only have to look at the comments on this piece posted on the ReadWriteWeb website http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_wants_to_be_your_one_true_login.php to see that many people find it difficult to do anything that is outside the 'norm' (see also Phil Bradley's blog post on this and other examples of how people sometimes (or often?) struggle with even the simplest things online http://philbradley.typepad.com/phil_bradleys_weblog/2010/02/how-hard-is-the-internet-3-examples.html)
Owen
The Open University is incorporated by Royal Charter (RC 000391), an exempt charity in England & Wales and a charity registered in Scotland (SC 038302).
lis-e-resources is a UKSG list - http://www.uksg.org/serials
UKSG groups also available on Facebook and LinkedIn
|