the Openly Informatics Division of OCLC has a free Firefox extension
that will help you do this.

http://openly.oclc.org/linkevaluator/

Basicaally, you make a web page (or just use your bookmarks) with
links to all the resources you want to "evaluate". Then you run the
evaluator every day to check the status of the resources. The
advantage of using a browser-based link-checker is that it duplicates
the experience of a user with respect to authentication, etc.

>I've been toying with the idea of doing a random access check every day.
>Just drop a list of titles or packages (with access url's) to which you
>subscribe into an array and have a php or perl script randomly select
>one every day of the week and print it to a webpage where you could just
>click on the link and go.  That way you'd be proactively checking access
>year-round rather than reactively during problem periods.
>
>In most cases I imagine all would be well and you could go on with your
>day and other times, but less often, you'd discover a problem before it
>became a problem.
>
>Opinions?
>
>Chad E. Hutchens
>Electronic Resources Librarian
>Montana State University Libraries
>P.O. Box 173320
>Bozeman, MT  59717-3320
>(406) 994-4313 phone
>(406) 994-2851 fax
>chutchens@montana.edu

--

Eric Hellman, Director                            OCLC Openly
Informatics Division
eric@openly.com                                    2 Broad St., Suite 208
tel 1-973-509-7800 fax 1-734-468-6216              Bloomfield, NJ 07003
http://openly.oclc.org/1cate/      1 Click Access To Everything