Scope: These best practices were communicated to the 5 "everyone" lists on June 26, 2020 after programmatic changes to EZproxy were made after a security certificate update was made by Core Services to comply with OIT standards. For about 23 years, having the EZProxy prefix automatically prepended to URLs in the Books & Media catalog has served to ensure that users are forced to authenticate for licensed resources. The Metadata & Discovery Strategy Department met with members of the Assessment & User Experience Department, Resource Description Department, and Core Services to develop a long-term solution. That solution means that URLs to subscribed eResources will include the proxy prefix in Aleph. Links provided to patrons should be to the Books & Media catalog in order to ensure that authentication errors are minimized.
Contact: Jacquie Samples
Unit: Metadata & Discovery Strategy department
Date last reviewed: 12/7/2020
Date of next review: 03/31 Mar /2023
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Linking to individual records in the Books & Media catalog, or the Online Journal Titles list, rather than directly to an ebook or an ejournal on a publisher’s platform, is the most stable way to provide access to patrons. This is the best practice and needs to be communicated broadly. If there is a need to provide direct-linking, please be sure to use the current proxy prefix.
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