I personally think that having to maintain a list of user ids and
passwords is a real pain and would love to find a way to get around
that.  For the most part, though, our journal publishers use ip
authentication  and are fine with that, but a few do not.  Some
publishers and database companies stipulate in their licenses that only
students, staff, or faculty of your college are allowed to use the
product.  This seems kind of silly to me, because in the old days of
print journals and microfilm, there were no restrictions on access.
Anyone who could get to the library could use it or copies could be
requested on ill.  It seems odd to me that the the introduction of a new
delivery medium changed this.  Maybe I am missing the obvious here.

Barbara Pope, MALS
Reference/Periodicals Librarian
Axe Library
Pittsburg State University
Pittsburg KS  66762

James, Richard wrote:
> Granted that IP identification is better than password authentification, but- is there any pressing need to be concerned with keeping the passwords confidential? The provider is the loser, in so far as there is a loser in this scenario. What is the downside to a library of having the password for some part of its resources being widely available? It seems less like a problem and more like mission fulfillment.
>
> RIchard James
> (Just my personal opinion etc. not that of my employer)
>
>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: SERIALST: Serials in Libraries Discussion Forum on behalf of Toni Fortini
>> Sent: Tue 5/29/2007 4:25 PM
>> To: SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU
>> Subject: Re: [SERIALST] Dealing with password authenticated online content
>>
>
>
>> Chad brings up a good point: the problem with password authentication is
>> the inability to keep passwords confidential.
>>
>
>
>