Eduserv Athens

I have seen the light at the end of tunnel and it is not a train comming towards me. I just sat in on a technology showcase by Eduserv Athens regarding access management. Are you an institution that shares IP ranges (*gasp*), are you a hospital or institution that does not have a proxy server, are your electronic resources trapped on your intranet page only accessible to on campus users? Then Eduserv Athens might be the answer to your problems.

Eduserv Athens has been around for over 10 years in the UK and is now available to United States institutions through Teton Data Systems (the people who bring you STATRef!). You do NOT need to have STATRef! to have Eduserve Athens.

Athens allows institutional users to have ONE username and ONE password for all of your institutional resources. You provide a link for your users to self register (creating their username and password) and from there they can access your list of resources from anywhere in the world. They no longer have remember the username and password for Ovid and then a separate one from MDConsult, and another one for STATRef! or any of your other resources. They log in with their username and password and voila they can access all of those resources, because Athens has validated them as your authorized user. Think of all the electronic journals they will be able to access.

I know when I get back from MLA I will be investigating this further for my hospital.

For more information go to http://www.statref.com/ourproducts/athens/athens.htm
For an solicited testimonial check out the Medlib post from Patti Reynolds, Director of Bishopric Medical Library, Sarasota Memorial Hospital.