Well stated, Michael. I could not agree with you more.

Best regards,

Stephanie

Stephanie H. Wical

Electronic Resources & Acquisitions Librarian

Mugar Memorial Library
Boston University

771 Commonwealth Avenue
Boston, MA 02215

Phone: 617-358-3967

From: Serials in Libraries Discussion Forum [mailto:SERIALST@LISTSERV.NASIG.ORG] On Behalf Of Rodriguez, Michael
Sent: Thursday, August 24, 2017 7:03 PM
To: SERIALST@LISTSERV.NASIG.ORG
Subject: Re: [SERIALST] question about digital serials access

Hi Anne-Marie,

This thread wandered somewhat far from your original query. To answer your questions: If colleagues came to me with a proposal that we start issuing library visitors (i.e., users not covered by licenses) off-site access privileges to licensed databases, specifically for the purpose of achieving off-site access to licensed databases, I would say no. If these visitors are visiting scholars or other people whose involvement with the university is such that they would normally receive credentials for various purposes (i.e., to access the learning management system or other university applications), then the university should issue these people with credentials. But a good guiding operational principles is that libraries not get into the business of arbiting new categories of user access, or of creating credentials outside the university’s identity management framework solely to enable those new categories. Probably I am being conservative, but the ROI on this is just too low to justify the strong potential for noncompliance with vendor licenses, or to justify the substantial time investment by expert staff to renegotiate potentially dozens or hundreds of vendor licenses simply to add affiliate access privileges. UConn’s case is unusual to my knowledge insofar as we have operationalized writing affiliate access into licenses and have done so for years. (I’ll add that none of these constraints apply to borrowing of physical books and media, unless the library signed a license for a DVD or audio CD—which we need to stop doing.) If your licenses say “valid ID-holders,” what you propose might work within the framework of the license—but if not, then walk-in privileges is the best you can do. I know this sounds stringent, but I’ve spent too much time running risk management and compliance not to provide you with this advice.

Please let me know if you have any follow-up questions! Seriously, we’re a good group and always happy to help. J

Regards,

Michael Rodriguez

Licensing/Acquisitions Librarian

University of Connecticut

369 Fairfield Way U-1005B | Storrs, CT 06269

michael.a.rodriguez@uconn.edu | 860-486-9325

From: Serials in Libraries Discussion Forum [mailto:SERIALST@LISTSERV.NASIG.ORG] On Behalf Of Fastmail
Sent: Wednesday, August 23, 2017 9:35 PM
To: SERIALST@LISTSERV.NASIG.ORG
Subject: Re: [SERIALST] question about digital serials access

Dear Michael,

Thank you for your specific and detailed reply! This is enormously helpful. Do you think that a very large university like Yale could offer a limited number of visitor cards, them call those users “university affiliates” and allow them to access eresources from their own computers? My primary interest is coming up with a realistic proposal (for a school project) that might eliminate the inefficiency created by requiring that visiting scholar bring their own laptops and use eduRoam to get a computer anywhere near special collections or comfortable seating, but then requiring that they log in to a “home” library account to add money to that account in order to use a scanner or copier (which is, of course, very expensive). Heaven forbid they want to print anything—that would require using a separate computer belonging to the library. My understanding is that archives and special collections the world over end up with people taking photographs with digital cameras, and when that’s an easier solution, something is very wrong.

I hope that makes some sense; librarians end up losing a lot of time to explaining an unnecessarily difficult process, when you add it all up over the course of a year. As you say, the number of users who visit is not large, compared to the total (students + faculty), and as long as they are have come all the way to Yale to access its vast collections, it seems to me that there ought to be some way to offer access to the ridiculous digital resources as well, especially given that Sterling Library is moving towards an all-digital journal collection. I would limit this to users who are on campus, but I do dream of allowing them to use their own computers. Do you think that’s at all realistic? Again, I am sorry if this is obvious, but I have just begun my education.

Thanks again,

Anne-Marie

Anne-Marie Lindsey

Library Science and Information Management

iSchool at Syracuse University

On Aug 23, 2017, 12:34 PM -0400, Rodriguez, Michael <michael.a.rodriguez@UCONN.EDU>, wrote:

Hi Lindsey,

Once contractually permitted, alumni access privileges to eresources are easy to configure in EZproxy as long as the alumni category is clearly defined and consistently used in your university’s identity management system (typically CAS and/or LDAP). What our EZproxy service does at UConn, is query CAS to confirm that the user’s NetID is valid and then query LDAP to make sure that the NetID does not match one of the prohibited categories. We maintain separate LDAP categories for affiliated users and for alumni. We have a resource block in our Ezproxy configuration that prohibits affiliated user access to specific eresources. One of my long-term projects is to identify eresources whose licenses already permit alumni access (e.g., Project Muse) and then configure EZproxy to allow alumni access specifically to those eresources, which, again, EZproxy can do easily given a good university infrastructure.

Regarding licensing that permits affiliate and alumni, the LIBLICENSE Model License has excellent language specifically authorizing access by visiting scholars and independent contractors, as well as a nice flexible clause authorizing “any valid ID-holders,” which could be readily interpreted as meaning anyone with valid university credentials. But most vendors are very wary of extending access to alumni—understandably so—and you’d probably get legal pushback and/or price increases from most vendors if you attempted to interpret a license so as to extend alumni access. However, most of UConn’s eresource licenses explicitly permit access for “university affiliates,” who after all constitute a tiny, tiny fraction of our total FTE.

At my prevous organization, alumni access to eresources was funded out of the Alumni Association’s budget.

That may be garbled, but I hope it helps!

Regards,

Michael Rodriguez

Licensing/Acquisitions Librarian

University of Connecticut

369 Fairfield Way U-1005B | Storrs, CT 06269

michael.a.rodriguez@uconn.edu | 860-486-9325

From: Serials in Libraries Discussion Forum [mailto:SERIALST@LISTSERV.NASIG.ORG] On Behalf Of Melissa Belvadi
Sent: Wednesday, August 23, 2017 11:30 AM
To: SERIALST@LISTSERV.NASIG.ORG
Subject: Re: [SERIALST] question about digital serials access

Start reading license agreements. Most explicitly deny this, some charge extra for it (whose budget would that come out of). It's not a technical/logistical issue, but a contractual one, and you have to analyze contract by contract AND then figure out how to provide that remote access to only the ones that are allowed and not the rest. We tried this once and ended up setting up a second ezproxy server to handle it. The project basically failed because the alumns who wanted access didn't want what we could provide but just the more expensive journals whose vendors would not allow alum access at all.

Melissa

On Wed, Aug 23, 2017 at 11:58 AM, Fastmail <amlindsey@fastmail.com> wrote:

Hello everyone,

I am in my first term at the iSchool at Syracuse, so do forgive me if this question is naïve. I would like to know if it is possible to give unaffiliated users access to electronic serials at a very large academic library?

I want to research the practicalities of implementing, for unaffiliated users such as visiting scholars, a system similar to the alumni library cards universities like Columbia and Yale have in place. I am an alumna of Barnard College, so I have friends with Columbia library cards, and I live in New Haven with friends who work at Yale Libraries, so I am also aware of Yale’s policies. Would it be possible to offer a paid library card system for unaffiliated users that would also offer access to electronic journals? Perhaps a limited number of these, to assure only a specific and measurable increase in users to subscription serials? I am thinking specifically of a university like Yale, where these cards and their users would constitute a very small number, compared to the total number of users. My professor fears that vendors would not consider this idea to be at all appealing, and would reject it out of hand. She suggested that I contact members of this list, as you are the experts!

Any ideas or suggestions would be incredibly helpful! I am at a stage in my research where I can be very flexible, so please send anything and everything my way.

Thanks in advance,

Anne-Marie

Anne-Marie Lindsey

Library Science and Information Management

iSchool at Syracuse University

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Melissa Belvadi

Collections Librarian

University of Prince Edward Island

mbelvadi@upei.ca 902-566-0581

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