There are several different ways to authenticate into Ebook Central; whether the link needs proxied or not depends on which authentication your library is set up for. It sounds to me like you’re set up for IP authentication, and that you should proxy your links.

 

The ProQuest folks you’re talking to may be misunderstanding the situation – my impression from all the migration documentation we went through was that ProQuest not only defaults to Shibboleth/single sign on, but they prefer it so strongly that the instructions on how to set up IP authentication are way down at the bottom of the how-to with a lot of not-really-subtle we-don’t-recommend-this signals. The reps may not be familiar with the needs of the authentication method their company is trying to discourage people from using.

 

Our PQEC authentication was through Shibboleth when it was first set up (no proxy required, but login required even on campus). We didn’t like that; it blocks walk-in users and gives ProQuest too much data about our patrons.*

 

We changed it to IP authentication, plus “anonymous access”, which means if you’re on campus, or already authenticated through our proxy, you can read e-books online without logging in. You would still have to log in with an Ebook Central account if you want to print, download chapters, or read a Non-Linear license e-book.

 

I’m not really a fan of the increased data-gathering that Ebook Central has implemented. Why do they need to know who’s printing what? Why do we have to ask for “anonymous access”, instead of it being the default? I was told that these were Features they were implementing to assure publishers that ProQuest is taking publishers’ intellectual property rights seriously, but it feels to me a lot like they’re slowly abandoning the core concept of patron privacy. I disapprove.

 

 

* Hey, maybe check your usage statistics and make sure Ebook Central isn’t associating patron usernames with session-level usage data. We pointed out that this was happening to us, asked them to stop, and they fixed it by “turning on patron privacy” for us. I requested that they make that the default for everyone (why wasn’t it already the default??) and they said they had done so… but maybe check, OK?