Remote Access from OHIONET
With OHIONET's Remote Access service, a hosted proxy server solution, you can provide remote access to your electronic information resources without the headaches associated with maintaining and supporting yet another piece of hardware at your facilities.
How It Works
With our service, we configure and maintain a proxy server in our facilities for those libraries that don't have one or cannot--or choose not to--support one locally.
We assign each library its own IP address for use with IP address restricted databases and will contact the database vendors to implement the IP address access through the proxy server.
If you desire, we can also provide regular usage reports.
Finally, as always, we will guide you through each step of the implementation and configuration process.
How It Looks
From a user perspective, patrons select the link on your web page to access the database of their choosing. Then:
- On-campus or in-library users bypass the proxy server and are forwarded directly to the requested resource.
- Remote users, however, are presented with a customized login page and are then validated by querying
- your library's patron database,
- your existing email or ftp server or
- a plain-text file of usernames and barcodes that you provide to us.
- Successfully validated users are directed to the appropriate information resource; others are presented with a customizable web page indicating that access to the resource could not be granted.
How Our Service Differs
OHIONET can provide remote access service for databases negotiated through OHIONET or acquired through other means such as those purchased directly through the database vendor.
Also, our service allows you to use a single URL for both in-house and remote database access.
Our service is completely customizable; all web pages presented to remote users can be customized to match your library's web site or catalog.
Finally, because we maintain separate servers for each, there is no need for patrons to identify their library or institutional affiliation.
If you'd like to learn more about OHIONET's Remote Access service, please feel free to contact Matt Polcyn.
