Paul Stainthorp Schrödinger's cataloguer

Here’s an idea I stole from technologist Phil Wolstenholme. See his website for a clearer explanation: http://wolstenhol.me/ezproxy/

It’s a bookmarklet which can be used to re-write stable/persistent journal URLs so that they’re passed through the University of Lincoln’s library proxy authentication service (EZproxy). You can then use the re-written links in Blackboard, reading lists, web pages, etc., with the confidence that University of Lincoln students will be able to access the resource, on- or off-campus, using their University login details.

First you’ll need to drag the below link up to your browser’s bookmark/links bar…

via EZproxy

Drag the above link to your bookmark bar

…then visit a journal/article/e-resource on the open web, and click the bookmarklet button. At this point one of two things will happen.

1. Either:

If you use the bookmarklet on one of the e-resources that we have set up to use with EZproxy, it will re-write the URL to go via a University login. Examples:

• http://www.jstor.org/stable/526194 → rewritten as → http://www.jstor.org.proxy.library.lincoln.ac.uk/stable/526194
• http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0038110103001011 → rewritten as → http://www.sciencedirect.com.proxy.library.lincoln.ac.uk/science/article/pii/S0038110103001011
• http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?arnumber=6292723 → rewritten as → http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.proxy.library.lincoln.ac.uk/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?reload=true&arnumber=6292723

If you’re not already logged in, when you proxify the URL (and when your users subsequently try to access the resource), you’ll see the standard University of Lincoln secure sign-in page.

You can now copy-and-paste the rewritten URL and add it as a link in Blackboard or a reading list.

2. Or:

If you try and use the bookmarklet with a journal/resource that doesn’t work with EZproxy (i.e. one that isn’t on this list)—either because we just don’t have access to it at Lincoln, or because it’s not currently set up to work off EZproxy/IP authentication—then you’ll probably see the following error:

To allow http://www.foobar.com/ to be used in a starting point URL, your EZproxy administrator must first authorize the hostname of this URL in the config.txt file.

Within this database’s section of config.txt, either the following line must be added:

Host www.foobar.com

or, alternatively, a RedirectSafe for this host or domain may be appropriate.

After editing config.txt, the EZproxy server must be restarted to make changes take effect.

If that happens to you, please tell me about it.

As an aside, I’d really like to see this functionality added to lncn.eu, our home-grown URL shortener. That is, if a user tried to minify a resource URL from a ‘whitelist’ of domains derived from the EZproxy /config.txt file, lncn.eu would respond with not one, but two shortened URLs, one of which would have been rewritten to go via EZproxy.

Tags: Blackboard, bookmarklet, e-journals, EZProxy, lncn.eu, persistent URL, Phil Wolstenholme, reading lists, stable URL, URLs