www.eduserv.org.uk/openathens

Help your users to discover your contentWith OpenAthens & Link Resolvers

Lyn Norris

What is OpenAthens?

• Username password system• Can integrate with Active Directory or portal• Recognised by all major publishers• Designed for librarians• Remote access system for librarians• IP independent subscriber definition• Categorised statistics

Libraries purchase OpenAthens because:

• No IT support at all• Need library website & user management• Can install & run it from the library

• Remote access • No IT support to run EZproxy or VPN• Access to network from offsite not permitted

• IP topology doesn’t match their subscriber base• large organisations with a single IP address range• US Dept of Defence; Dept of Veterans Affairs, hospital groups

• Want granular statistics of usage• Abbott Labs, BP

MyAthens – internet portal

Email your users

• OpenAthens users are self-selected• Users created on demand• Manually, from spreadsheets, from self registration

• Generate email lists• Inform them of your resources• Offer training sessions

Resources – available to patrons off-site

• But patrons don’t understand ‘resources’• Where to find a particular journal• Maybe journals or ebooks would be better• Journal A-Z

Hand crafted journal list

EBSCO A-Z list – with IP & Athens links

What about search?

• Multiple publisher platforms, all with individual search

• Users want to search across them all• Library options are Google Scholar & PubMed – Journal article information

• Need associated link resolvers

Link Resolvers

• Libraries can buy access to the same journal from different platforms– Direct from publishers– Or from an aggregator like Ovid, EBSCO or Ingenta

• Link Resolvers route the user to the appropriate copy for his library• Examples:

– EBSCO’s Link Source– TDNET’s link resolver– SFX– Serials Solutions

• Need to be configured for the library’s collection• And their authentication routes

Quosa document delivery

• New product from Elsevier• Corporate clients with document delivery accounts• Quosa intercepts doc del requests from link

resolver• Checks against already purchased articles• Only then sends request to doc del service

Discovery Services

• EBSCO Discovery• Serials Solutions Summon

• Take knowledge of your collection• Run searches across your collection• Use link resolvers to take user to appropriate copies

Help users to discover your collection

• OpenAthens for remote access & Internet portal• Publicise resources on portal• Journal A-Z for journal discovery• Link Resolvers hooked into PubMed & Google

Scholar

• Get more usage from your subscriptions

Thank you