Kia ora koutou

Last week I made the decision to delay the planned  go live with Open Athens (go live 15 February to be running for start of Semester 1 2022).  There were a number of reasons for this, the biggest being, a solution from IT/Digital Services that would only allow currently enrolled students to access our resources (we need them to set up and regularly maintain an access group), had not yet been put in place and tested.
We did not want to introduce additional student access problems for the start of semester (resolvable only by IT service desk who are always busy at that time), combined with Subject Librarian teaching and possible Omicron disruption for students and staff.

Instead we have opted to soft launch – allowing users to self-discover Open Athens through “access via your academic institution” type links in big publisher platforms e.g. Elsevier, but not change all the links in Horizon, Database pages, Multisearch, LEARN etc. just yet.  These will still point at ezproxy, which staff and returning students will be familiar with.
We will aim to do the proper go-live (which really just means changing all the library links to Open Athens ones) in the mid-semester break instead.

How will this change your library staff life?

Helping students who cannot log in to access resources

Users reporting they cannot access library e-resources may now be having problems with 2 separate access systems and finding out how they were trying to access the resource will be more important for troubleshooting.

• An ezproxy access (via Remote Access Login screen) issue will be likely if they are accessing  via library links (Catalogue, Database pages, Multisearch, LEARN,  “Full text at UC” Google Scholar links).
• An Open Athens issue (if they navigate to a publisher site themselves) can present 2 ways.
  – the users see a Microsoft error screen (this means they are not in the right current staff or student group and need to be added by Service Desk).
  – users see an Open Athens permission denied screen (the resource is not correctly set up for Open Athens).

This could get quite confusing so, for now, please refer all access denied type access problems to Library Digital Services  for investigation – we’ll work out what needs to be done to resolve the issue.  Screenshots/info from affected users will be very handy for us to do this.
If it’s definitely an Open Athens problem you can suggest users try the library catalogue/database link to the resource instead (please still report the problem to us though so they are sorted for when we go live).

LAC and Library Digital Services staff

We will need to maintain access to e-resources via both ezproxy/IP authentication and Open Athens.  Any new subscriptions and current ones with platform changes etc. will need to be set up and tested for both authentication systems.  Horizon/Library catalogue links will continue to be constructed via the existing link maker (with ezproxy string).

Helping lecturers with LEARN linking

LEARN links should continue to be constructed via the existing link maker (with ezproxy string).  We will look at converting these when we go live properly but will likely start with only new links at first.

If any teams would like more information on Open Athens, the soft launch, and what it looks like for users please contact me and I can set up a demonstration session(s).

Ngā mihi,

Romy (on behalf of Library Digital Services)